Chinese Mooncake Festival

In Chinese Lunar Calendar, August 15 is the Chinese Mooncake Festival. On this day, the moon is round and bright, like the chinese saying, "Yue Dao Zhong Qiu Fen Wai Ming" which means, the moon is the brightest during the Chinese Mooncake Festival. The moon is so round, so August 15 was also call the reunion festival. In Chinese, we call it "Tuan Yuan Jie".

Chinese Mooncake Festival is origin from the custom of Autumn praying and moon praying during the beginning of Qin Dynasty. Autumn is the season that has good return from the farm. Every family will pray the God of Land, sooner or later, this praying has become the tradition for every year.

In the meantime, the initial religion in China is more on praying many God. Praying on nature was also played an important role. All these reasons have lead to the Chinese Mooncake Festival.

Chinese Mooncake Festival starts to become a festival during Dynasty Tang. During Dynasty Qing, Chinese Mooncake Festival become more lively. In Beijing, you can feel the happiness throughout the city. Every family pray and bow to the God of Moon. At this time, the one that accompany the God of Moon is the jade rabbit. Jade rabbit has become popular with the promotion from the people. People made the shape of the jade rabbit by using the soil and colour it. People from late Qing also like the jade rabbit very much, they called it "Tu Er Ye".

At night time, old folks tend to tell story that related to the moon to the children, such as "Chang Er Ben Yue", "Yu Tu Gao Yao", "Wu Gang Kan Gui Shu", "Tang Wang You Yue Gong", etc.

Chang Er Ben Yue

There are many stories realted to Chang Er. However, "Chang Er Ben Yue" is the one that known by most of the people.

Long time ago, there is one year, 10 sun appear together in the sky, made the whole place become so hot and the smoke started to come out from the land, the water in the sea started to dry, all the plants in the farm died due to the hot weather.

There is one Hero called Hou Yi, he was stratled by the incident. He climb up the "Kun Lun" mountain, used his super energy with arrow and bow, he manage to shoot down 9 sun, and warn the last sun to appear on the sky timely. Hou Yi has helped and saved the people. All the people respect and love him. With his deed, many people come to him just to learn from him. A bad guy named Feng Meng also came with the same purpose.

Later, Hou Yi married a beautiful and kind wife named Chang Er. Everyday, Hou Yi will accompany her wife for the whole day except going for hungting and teaching his student. One day, he went to the Kun Lun mountain to visit his friend. On his way there, he met Wang Mu Niang Niang and asked for a elixir vitae. According to people, after eating the elixir vitae, one can immediately go to heaven and become immortal. However, Hou Yi doesn't want to left her wife behind, so he didn't take the elixir vitae and let Chang Er to keep it. Chang Er keep it in a box, unfortunately, Feng Meng saw it.

3 days later, Hou Yi going out for hunting with all his student. Feng Meng act like falling sick and stay back. After they left, Feng Meng go to Chang Er and force her with a sword, to hand him the elixir vitae. Chang Er knew she cannot fight with him, immediately, she take out the elixir vitae and eat it. Just after she ate the elixir vitae, Chang Er feel that her body float in the air, fly through the window and go directly to the sky. Chang Er think of her husband, so she fly to the moon, which is the nearest to the earth.

In the evening, Hou Yi come back from hunting. He knew the incident from the maid. He was so angry and want to kill Feng Meng. However, Feng Meng has run away.Hou Yi was so sad, look to the sky and cried for her wife's name. At this moment, he found out that the moon was so clear and bright. Furthermore, there is a shadow look like Chang Er. Hou Yi order his maid go to the garden, put all Chang Er favourite food on the table and start to pray her beloved wife.

After all the people knew that Chang Er has become immortal, they also started to pray under the moon and wish for good luck and prosperity. From that time onwards, the

　