What happens during the Moon Festival in China?

Question

What customs exist in regard to what you can do or can't do during this time?

Answer 1

they will eat one special food in this festival --moon cake

Answer 2

The Moon festival is the second most important festival next to the Spring Festival to Chinese people. When the festival comes people go home from every corner of the world to meet their family and have dinner with them. And people also eat a special food -  Moon Cake only in this festival.

Answer 3

The Moon or Mid-Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, observes the biggest and brightest full moon of the year, the harvest moon.

One legend about the Moon Festival concerns expert architect Hou Yih, who built a palace of jade for the Goddess of the western heaven. In reward, she gave Hou Yih a pill with the elixir of immortality, warning him not to take it until he had fulfilled certain conditions. Hou Yih’s ever-curious wife, Chang O, found the pill and promptly swallowed it. As punishment, she was banished to the moon where, according to tradition, her beauty is at its most radiant on the day of the Moon Festival.

The Festival is a public holiday marked by family reunions, moon gazing, and the eating of moon cakes-round pastries stuffed with red bean paste and an egg yolk, or fruit and preserves.

Answer 4

read...

http://chineseculture.about.com/library/...

Answer 5

I liken it to a harvest festival but thats not the meaning.

It is mean to be a time then love ones, family think about one another.

It falls on the (I forget how many full moons into the Chinese year it is) day then the full moon is at its nearest to the earth. Couples and family go outside and look up and think of one and another.

Today it has become slightly commercialised with the selling of moon cakes, traditionally made of sweet pasty with an egg yolk inside, but nowaday they come with all kinds of fillings ranging from fruit, sweet meat to chocolate ones.

Answer 6

It is a festival for family gathering, we usually have dinner together, then blew a pot of Chinese tea and share the mooncakes.