The Mid-Autumn Festival (Zhongqiu jie) is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. It is a kind of thanksgiving, admiring the beautiful gifts of nature and reflection near the end of the year arduous task in the field.
The autumn nights are more pleasant and for the Chinese, the moon appears bigger and round at this time of year.
For that reason, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a celebration primarily related to the moon, around the world devoted to looking at that night, which constitutes much of the theme of classical Chinese poetry.
addition, during this holiday families gather and eat yue bing (moon cakes), which is a round cake with lotus seeds.
The habit of eating moon cakes this holiday has a long story.
The Mongols invaded China in 1279 and founded the Yuan dynasty. To ensure your domain, imposing the order of every ten families using a single knife in their daily lives, so people had no weapons of metal so if they wanted to rise too difficult. In addition, these Mongols, whom they called Dazi, perpetrating all kinds of evil. The people, tired of so many injustices, decided to rebel, to do so, the organizers conceived the idea of \u200b\u200bpromoting the neighbors to regale each other moon cakes on the eve of the celebration of autumn. Among them wore a small pamphlet with the following words: we act together on 15 of the eighth month to kill and destroy Dazi Yuan Dynasty. This was how the rebels were summoned to survey the neighbors proposed. Thus, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival 1368, the Chinese took up arms against the foreign invader, expelling beyond the confines of the Great Wall.
After this practice giving away cakes among the people on the eve of the feast has been kept as a habit. As the moon cake is round, representing the family reunion, as well as happiness and satisfaction.
Each province in China has his way of preparing the moon cakes. In some places, like Taiwan, the cover is more crisp and brittle. In other places, such as Guangdong, the cover is soft and thinner.
Undoubtedly, the style moon cakes are the most famous Cantonese.
Over time the development of the cake becomes better. For the filling use different ingredients, such as pipes, nuts, sugar, cocoa, chocolate, sesame, ham, etc.
One of the most common filling is a mixture of lotus seed paste, dates, and egg yolks. Such ingredients are related to the uprising against the Mongols. Lotus seeds represent the seeds of rebellion, the dates the date of the uprising, and the oppressive yoke buds should be removed.
The Chinese have always believed that the moon has a great beauty, so many legends have invented it. Among the people spreading the story that the moon lives a lady who was the wife of Hou Yi, a mythological character that brought down with arrows nine of the ten suns that damaged crops. Queen Celestial Court, pleased by the heroic action of Hou Yi, gave him a pill of immortality and told her to take it after a year of fasting, meditation and spiritual preparation.
Upon arriving home, the archer hid his precious pills under a beam, so that no one steal, and then began preparation for immortality.
But the lady, known by the name of Chang O, in the absence of her husband, she saw a white light that seemed to fall from a roof beam, while a delicious smell filled the room. With the help of a ladder came to where the light came, found the pill of immortality and drank. Suddenly he felt he was free from the operations of the laws of gravity as if it had wings and was testing its first flight when Hou Yi returned.
He went to get his pad and not finding, Chang O asked what had happened.
The young wife, filled with fear, opened the window and flew away. Hou Yi took his bow and pursued. The moon was full, clear night and he saw that his wife was flying in front of him quickly, within walking distance. Just as he was speeding to catch a gust of wind knocked him down like a dry leaf. Chang O
continued their flight until they reached the light field, it shone like glass, of enormous size and very cold.
Upon discovering his mistake, she wanted to reverse the spell and stuck his fingers in his mouth to try to throw the pill.
After much effort, Chang O coughed and vomited. Touching the floor, the bar was transformed into a rabbit as white as pure as jade, with a pestle and mortar.
However, she could not return to his mortal state and he had to accept the fate of living forever in lunar palace, accompanied by the faithful bunny crushing medicinal material every day.
animal
addition, they saw an almost 1,500 meters high. Under this tree, Wu Gang, another mythological character, continues to cut firewood.
By learning the art of being immortal, Gang Wu had committed crimes. As punishment, the gods forced him to pull down the cassia of the moon. Gang Wu
began cutting the tree, but every time I hit a hack, the resulting piece was growing rapidly and before he could issue the following hack, the trunk and had regained its original appearance. Gang Wu
never could cut the cassia of the moon, so that their punishment would last indefinitely.
But Wu Gang and Chang O would have no chance to make friends.
Both were condemned to solitude, but Chang O her beauty and eternal youth could not give you any happiness. And for this
legend, in Chinese culture, the moon also symbolizes the sadness, loneliness and longing for family.
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