"There is no thunder or rain in the sky, and there is no media on the ground to get married." Tujia people regard the moon as a matchmaker, as an "old man" who matches people, matches marriages and is beautiful when he grows up. Mid-Autumn Festival is the birthday of the "old man" and also a "moonlight birthday", so it is called "Ziba" and "Yue Bai's birthday".
After young Tujia men and women fall in love, the girl will give her sweetheart a hand-embroidered "embroidered belt" and "flower insole" to convey her feelings, and she will also embroider a picture of "Yuanyang playing in the water" with white plain silk as a token of love. Tujia people who live in Tujia mountain villages such as Huangshui, Lengshui, Guantian, Zhong Yi, Shashi and Huzhen at the foot of Qiyan Mountain, after the harvest in the new valley, on the Mid-Autumn Festival, the mother-in-law family happily invited their son-in-law to "eat" with the newly-made glutinous rice, and invited them to "taste new things" to taste the joy of the harvest that year.
More interestingly, when the unmarried son-in-law comes home, the girl will kindly give her sweetheart a round and big "big praise". Ciba symbolizes a girl's loyalty to love, not separated from her sweetheart like Ciba, but round and round like Ciba. The girl dyed colorful vegetable red on the rice cake and wrote some beautiful sentences, such as "Spend a full moon", "Couple for a hundred years", "Tune the piano forever" and "Couples sing together". Educated girls write poems and draw colorful pictures of phoenix magpies on it, which is more poetic.
On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, the air is crisp in autumn, and the full moon in Gui Xiang is like water. Tujia people set up an incense table in the courtyard dam in front of the Diaojiao Building in the cottage, and offered offerings such as moon cakes, rice cakes, peanuts and osmanthus wine to worship the moon god "Yue Bai" and pray for a bumper harvest, a happy family and no disaster. Pray for lovers to get married. Then drink, eat moon cakes, and eat "moon watching" at the courtyard dam.
After enjoying the moon, Tujia young men and women "steal melons" in the vegetable garden in the dead of night, and the owner of the melons can't yell at them when they find out. The stolen pumpkin was quietly sent to the home of a couple who had been married for a long time but had no children and put on the bed. One person cried like a baby, and the other said four or eight auspicious words, wishing the melon owner to have children in the coming year. This custom is called "seeing off the boy", which means "breaking the melon and getting the child". If the owner of the melon gives birth to a child next year, he will hold a banquet to invite the owner and farmers of the melon as a reward.
The custom of "stealing melons" to send "boys" and its magical legend. According to legend, in the ancient Tujia mountain village, there was a couple in their 500 s, who had no children and no daughters, but had a good life. One Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th, Emperor Niangniang passed by Tujia Mountain Village. After hearing the kind praise from the old people, he left one of his children in the melon shed and ordered the villagers to give it to the old people. So the villagers quietly sent the pumpkin shaped like a doll to the old man's bed. When the old man was sleeping, the pumpkin broke, and suddenly a lively and lovely baby jumped out of the pumpkin. The old man was moved to tears and later spent his old age happily. After "breaking the melon and getting the child", it followed the custom of becoming a party.