As early as more than 4,000 years ago, Chinese ancestors had been observing the movement of the sun and the moon and exploring the time sequence of heaven and earth. For thousands of years, Mid-Autumn Festival customs have been passed down from generation to generation in various places. People use the bright moon to convey sincere greetings and beautiful expectations. Just as the poet Li Bai wrote a famous sentence through the ages: "People today cannot see the moon in ancient times, but this moon once illuminated the ancients." This round of bright moon connects ancient and modern times, and has also become a spiritual link between people today and ancient people to communicate across time and space.
Jue Mountain in Zezhou County, Jincheng, Shanxi Province has been a moon-viewing resort since ancient times, and the tradition of climbing mountains and chanting poems to praise the moon continues to this day. On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Jincheng City Poetry and Couplet Society held a Mid-Autumn Poetry Recital here.
The tradition of appreciating the moon and reciting poems that has been passed down for thousands of years is a vivid reflection of Jincheng people’s Mid-Autumn Festival customs. Today, Zezhou's Mid-Autumn Festival customs have been included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. Characteristic folk customs such as chanting poems to praise the moon and making moon cakes have been passed down from generation to generation under this protection. As the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, villagers in Duanhe Village at the foot of Jue Mountain light charcoal fires and start making traditional firewood mooncakes. From kneading dough, rolling out cakes, spreading stuffing, kneading lace, and printing flowers with auspicious meanings, this craft is passed down from generation to generation and is the simplest way for villagers to continue the roots of local culture.
The stove used to make moon cakes is very special, with charcoal fire on top and moon cakes on the bottom. This will prevent the mooncakes from burning and make them soft and crispy after being baked. It is this alluring aroma that makes people in Duanhe Village yearn for the taste of their hometown no matter where they are.
In the small drying area in the village, several villagers brought in stoves to bake mooncakes together. Many of the children of these villagers are in other places. They hope that during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the children can eat moon cakes made by themselves.
Compared with Duanhe Village, Lizhai Village, which also belongs to Nanling Town, has more convenient transportation, and the sales of firewood mooncakes here are also greater. In the cultural park of Lizhai Village, more than a dozen people make firewood mooncakes, but demand still exceeds supply. Traditional craftsmanship has been recognized by the market and attracted more young people to learn and protect it.
In the evening, Duan Jiemin helped the neighbor's uncle collect the corn to be dried, and his daughter also came back. The little girl lives with her mother in downtown Jincheng. When I go home during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the happiest thing is to go to the village with my grandfather and father to pick persimmons with bamboo poles. Picking persimmons during the Mid-Autumn Festival is also a local custom.
In autumn in the mountains, the temperature difference between day and night is large, and the coolness of autumn can be clearly felt at night. The charcoal fire for making moon cakes was still burning, and the whole courtyard was warmed. In the middle of the dining table, there are five firewood mooncakes stacked from large to small, which symbolizes a bumper harvest and five blessings. According to local Mid-Autumn Festival customs, fresh fruits are indispensable for the reunion dinner. The plump pomegranate symbolizes fertility and prosperity. Persimmons picked by three generations of ancestors and grandchildren symbolize everything goes well. A year ago, Duan Jiemin, who had worked abroad for many years, returned to Duanhe Village and served as the village party secretary. He has been thinking about how to develop the ancestral mooncake-making craft.
For hundreds of years, the charcoal fires lit on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival have warmed the villages deep in the Taihang Mountains, allowing local folk customs to be passed down from generation to generation.
The same bright moon connects the past and the present, and the same land carries the footprints of the past and present.
At the Taosi Temple site in Xiangfen, Shanxi, ancestors more than 4,000 years ago began to look up at the movement of the sun and the moon, ask about the timing of heaven and earth, and lay down the roots of civilization for future generations to respect the timing of heaven.
At the Taosi Observatory, the No. 7 observation slit reconstructed by archaeologists is the observation mark shared by the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. In ancient times, when the rising sun appeared exactly in the middle of this gap, our ancestors would judge the equinox season accordingly. September 23 is the autumnal equinox. This light and shadow, which has spanned more than 4,300 years, has landed at the starting point of archaeological restoration and observation. The saying "The calendar resembles the sun, moon and stars, and they teach people the time" recorded in "Shangshu Yaodian" has vivid archaeological evidence.
The Taosi ruins use an observatory to measure the year and a bronze gear-shaped device to calculate the moon. The bronze device with 29 angular teeth is probably the "moon phase calculator" of the ancestors of Taosi. It can be used to deduce the small moon of the lunar calendar, and also symbolizes the cycle of the synodic moon.
Not only in the Taosi ruins, but also in the many civilization relics left in the land of China, there are also cultural imprints of the ancients exploring natural rhythms and following the weather. The oracle bone inscriptions unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Henan Province record the observation of at least five lunar eclipses during the period of King Wuding of Shang Dynasty.
The oracle bone inscriptions unearthed from the Yin Ruins have preserved a large amount of information on divination, sacrifices and other aspects of the royal family of the Shang Dynasty, helping modern people understand the society of the Shang Dynasty. Businessmen determined the months based on the waxing and waning phases of the moon, and demonstrated their superb wisdom by setting up leap months to adjust the time difference between the lunar cycle and the solar return year.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the bright moon is in the sky, and Chinese people always use a bright moon to express their wishes for reunion. This expectation of "getting together" also rests on the oracle bones from three thousand years ago. In the early years, some oracle bones unearthed from the Yin Ruins were scattered overseas, separated by mountains and seas, and it was difficult to return home. Now in Anyang, Henan, scientific researchers are using digital technology to bring these wandering fragments of civilization to a special reunion.
At Anyang Normal University, the Key Laboratory of Oracle Bone Information Processing of the Ministry of Education launched the "Global Digital Oracle Bone Return Project" - to digitally collect all information on oracle bones scattered overseas, allowing them to return to their hometown in digital form across mountains and seas.
In 2019, Oracle Laboratory built and launched the "Yin Qi Wenyuan" big data platform. The platform contains hundreds of oracle bone works and more than 200,000 oracle bone images, and is open to the public for free. In 2025, the laboratory teamed up with Tencent and Xiamen University to develop the world's first oracle-bone intelligent agent "Yin Qixingzhi", which used artificial intelligence to assist in piecing together oracle-bone fragments and interpreting unidentified oracle-bone inscriptions.
The full moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival brings rites and rituals that last for thousands of years. In 2006, the Mid-Autumn Festival was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists. As a traditional folk custom carrying the culture of reunion, it has been passed down from generation to generation.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Qiu Shui Literary Club of Anyang Normal University also held a Mid-Autumn gathering. The students played Fei Hua Ling, using the word "moon" as the command word, and took turns reciting poems containing the moon. In the smooth and oblique rhythms, they felt the reunion and good wishes of their family and country entrusted in the moonlight.
