This is a happy thing for the ancients to be both refined and popular. Many rich people build their own colorful buildings, while good tourists climb mountains or swim in the water, and they must have nuclear dishes and wine pulp. Scholars write poems, and laymen tell stories about the past, often staying up all night.

Stay up late:

According to folklore, the later you sleep on Mid-Autumn Night, the longer you live. So some people pray for longevity, but more modern young people take this opportunity to play all night.

Stealing onions and vegetables:

According to legend, if an unmarried girl steals vegetables or onions from another vegetable garden in the mid-autumn night, it means that she will meet a Mr. Right in the future. There is a saying in Taiwan Province that "steal onions and marry a good husband;" Stealing vegetables and marrying a good husband "refers to this custom."

Eat duck:

Mulao people in Yunnan pay attention to buying cakes and killing ducks on this day. What osmanthus duck, salted duck and Zhangcha duck in Nanjing often sell well at this time. If you don't find anything, it's probably not bad to take a Beijing roast duck home to eat.

Eat snails:

Folk believe that the mid-autumn snail can improve eyesight. After investigation, vitamin A contained in snail meat is an important substance of eye visual pigment. It can be seen that this statement makes sense. But why do you have to eat it in the Mid-Autumn Festival? It was pointed out that before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the snails were empty, there were no snails in the abdomen, so the meat quality was particularly fat. Nowadays, in Guangzhou, many families have the habit of frying snails during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Eat taro:

Qing Qianlong's "Chaozhou Prefecture Records" said: "Playing with the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival, peeling taro and eating it, is called peeling ghost skin." Therefore, eating taro in the Mid-Autumn Festival means to ward off evil spirits and eliminate disasters, and it means not believing in evil spirits.

Drink osmanthus wine:

Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs" contains poems such as "Help a horse fight and drink cinnamon pulp" and "Drink cinnamon wine and drink pepper pulp". But now, people mostly use red wine instead.

4. What's the difference between the Mid-Autumn Festival customs in North and South?

Reporter: What are the differences between the Mid-Autumn Festival customs in the north and the south?

Li Huifang: The custom of Mid-Autumn Festival in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces is well preserved. The most famous one is to watch the tide by looking at the moon. The moon comes out on August 15th, which is the most spectacular moment of the tide in Qiantang River. In the past, women in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces had to dress up to go to the moon, because the moon was a female god, and "men don't Yue Bai, women don't sacrifice stoves". The custom in Hubei and Sichuan is to steal melons to send children. For women who are infertile after marriage, their relatives will go to other people's homes to steal pumpkins or white gourd (the southern homophonic man, the melon seeds are homophonic, and the white gourd symbolizes strong children) on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. These people draw children's eyebrows on melons, put on clothes and secretly put them in the bed of infertile women. The next day, infertile people will be very happy when they find out, and the stolen people will be very happy because they are doing it.

Ye Chunsheng: Cantonese people have the most diverse customs of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival. There are more than 70 kinds of moon cakes in Guangzhou, with thin skin and thick stuffing. In Beijing, moon cakes with thick skin are eaten in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and moon cakes with crispy skin are spread from Vietnam. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Cantonese people pay special attention to their recipes. Eating taro is a homonym for "losing people's heads". Cantonese people also eat fried snails, which contain many seeds, symbolizing many children and many blessings. Children will travel around singing children's songs with lamps made of grapefruit skin. Before liberation, there was another custom of "erecting Mid-Autumn Festival", putting a tall pole on the roof, putting some crops on the roof, and celebrating the harvest by burning towers. "August 15th Mid-Autumn Festival, some people happy and some people sad. Some people play the flute upstairs, and some people frown underground. "