Mid-Autumn Festival Celebrations Through the Ages

The Mid-Autumn Festival became an official public holiday only in 2008, but it has been celebrated for centuries

As one of the oldest traditional celebrations in China, the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Zhongqiu Jie (中秋节), was not made an official holiday until 2008. In an effort to promote traditional culture, the country’s State Council made the festival a paid holiday for workers that year, along with the Qingming Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival.

During the Zhou dynasty (1046 – 256 BCE), the Mid-Autumn Festival began as a worship ritual by kings, who would pray to the moon for a good harvest. Over time, ordinary people also start to celebrate the day. Appreciating the full moon in the clear autumn sky became a popular activity.

Around the Tang dynasty (618 – 907), the moon became associated with several legends: the lonely goddess Chang’e, a jade rabbit who pounds medicine in a mortar to make an elixir for the jade emperor, and the Sisyphus-like lumberjack Wu Gang, forever chopping a self-healing osmanthus tree on the moon.

The celebrations became a city-wide event in the Song dynasty (960 – 1279). In the capital, the Mid-Autumn Festival was a night of feasting, drinking, and visiting night-markets till dawn, according to Meng Yuanlao’s (孟元老) memoir, The Eastern Capital: A Dream of Splendor (《东京梦华录》). Mooncakes also appeared around this time, but it wasn’t until later that they became a Mid-Autumn Festival treat.

The modern notions and rituals of the festival formed in the Ming (1368 – 1644) and Qing (1616 – 1911) dynasties. People offered sacrifices, such as fruits and incense, to the moon to pray for the happiness of their families, and gifted mooncakes to one another to express wishes for family unity and health—these customs remain in many parts of China today.

Discover photos of Mid-Autumn celebrations through history below:

During the Republican Era (1912–1949), a child in Beijing prays to Lord Rabbit, or 兔儿爷, as part of the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations. The ritual originated in the Ming dynasty, inspired by a legend of a rabbit on the moon who delivered medicine to every family in the capital to protect them from plague. (VCG)

In the 1950s, fisherman Guo Ru, then in his 80s, celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, with his family spanning four generations (VCG)

Customers browse mooncakes in a grocery store in Fuzhou, Fujian province, in 1987 (VCG)

Locals fill a park in Guangzhou on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2002 (VCG)

Locals perform the “fire dragon dance,” a Mid-Autumn Festival custom in Xiamao village, Guangdong province, in 2014 (VCG)

A community dinner with song and dance performances to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, in 2019 (VCG)

In 2023, Wuhan Polar Ocean Park celebrated the festival with an underwater performance depicting the goddess Chang’e flying to the moon (VCG)

As this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival coincides with the National Day holiday, a group of students from a local elementary school in Huzhou, Zhejiang, made lanterns incorporating National Day elements to celebrate both (VCG)