This festival originated from the early "July and a half" harvest in autumn to worship ancestors. The birth of "July and a half" can be traced back to the ancestor worship and the harvest festival in ancient times. In ancient times, people often relied on the blessing of the gods for the harvest of farming.

Ancestors are worshipped in spring, summer, autumn and winter, but the "autumn taste" in early autumn is very important. Autumn is the harvest season. People hold ceremonies to offer sacrifices to the ancestors' souls, offer the best seasonal products to the gods first, and then taste the fruits of these labors themselves, and pray for a good harvest in the coming year.

"July 30" was originally a folk ancestor worship festival in ancient times, but it was called "Zhongyuan Festival", which originated from Taoism after the Eastern Han Dynasty. Taoism has a "three-yuan theory", and the name "Zhong Yuan" comes from the fact that "Heaven officials bless the Yuan Dynasty, local officials forgive sins in the Yuan Dynasty, and water officials relieve Eritrea in the Yuan Dynasty.

Buddhism calls July and a half the "Bonin Festival". In the Tang Dynasty, when the rulers praised Taoism, the Taoist Mid-Yuan Festival began to flourish, and gradually fixed "Zhong Yuan" as the name of the festival, which was set on July 15 and has been going on ever since.

Festival significance of Mid-Autumn Festival

From the legends about July and a half, we can deeply understand that the sacrifice in July and a half has a dual significance, one is to show filial piety of remembering ancestors, and the other is to carry forward the righteous act of pushing oneself and others and being charitable. This is all from the perspective of compassion, which is very human. Therefore, while celebrating Zhongyuan, we should get rid of the ghost's point of view and look forward to mutual love.

As far as its cultural connotation is concerned, July 30 is also one of the traditional festivals for ancestor worship in China, and a belief is reflected behind its culture. July 30 belongs to intangible cultural heritage, is a kind of culture, and is an ancient and modern tradition of remembering the ancestors. This tradition embodies the ancient people's thought of "being cautious in the end and pursuing the distance", and its cultural core is to respect the ancestors and be filial.