Happy Lantern Festival!

Or.. do you prefer calling it the Mooncake festival??

Lantern Festival

However it was first called the Mid-Autumn festival in the Zhou Dynasty.
In Malaysia and Singapore, it is sometimes referred the Mooncake festival or Lantern Festival. This festival is a tradition of Chinese origin, dating back over 3000 years to moon worship in the Shang dynasty. (well, you know, most chinese worship many things, they practise animism)
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar,and is a legal holiday in several countries. (whereas in M'sia, it's only a priviledge to chinese schools ;P)Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together.

How kids usually celebrate this festival XD

Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

1) Eating moon cakes outside under the moon (yea, that was what my family when I was a
child XD)

Mooncake

2) Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
3) Carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns (for
me, it's always just the carrying lantern part. I'd once burnt my waist-length long
hair, sobs~ *_*..)
4) Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e (嫦娥)
5) Planting Mid-Autumn trees
6) Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
7) Fire Dragon Dances

While Westerners may talk about the "man in the moon", the Chinese talk about the "woman in the moon". The story of the fateful night when Chang'e was lifted up to the moon (this is insane, a person gaining the ability to fly by just taking a pill?? and if it did happened, why would she choose the moon??), familiar to most Chinese citizens, is a favorite subject of poets. Unlike many lunar deities in other cultures who personify the moon, Chang'e lives in the moon. Tradition places Houyi and Chang'e around 2170 BC, in the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao, shortly after that of Huang Di.

Chang'e 嫦娥

There are so many variations and adaptations of the Chang'e legend that one can become overwhelmed and utterly confused. However, most legends about Chang'e in Chinese mythology involve some variation of the following elements: Houyi, the Archer; Chang'e, the mythical Moon Goddess of Immortality; an emperor, either benevolent or malevolent; an elixir of life; and the Moon.

However, my obsession on the myth vanished when I got to know that the Americans had put a man on the moon back in 1969, and the images taken on the moon were nothing more than stones and dusts... Hence, say 'bye' to Chang'e, say 'sayonara' to Yuetu...