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Hello and welcome to the history of China.

Holiday special for mid-autom.

Fly me to the moon.

Happy September 10th, 2022, a special day this year, because it marked one of the major Chinese and East Asian holidays.

Mid-Aum Festival, known as Zhong Xiu-Jet in Chinese, Tzu-Suk in Korea, Tsukimi in Japan, Tets Chongtu in Vietnam,

and by many other names all over the world. It is a lunar holiday celebrating the 8th full moon of the Chinese lunar solar calendar, which means that it is variably held between

mid-September, as in this year, and as late as early October.

What is the purpose of this holiday? Why, the same is the point of just about any

autumnal holiday, of course. Harvest time. From Halloween to Thanksgiving, to other such

holidays around the world, autumn is a time to get those crops cut and out of the field, and then

prepared for the long cold winter to follow.

It also means a time of family gathering, giving thanks for the good fortune of the previous year,

and prayers in looking forward to the good things yet to come in the spring to follow.

And, of course, eating. Lots and lots of eating. You got to pack on enough calories to make it through the winter,

after all. As far as traditional Chinese holidays go, a mid-autom festival is a truly ancient one,

dating back at least as far as the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago, and likely

deriving from even further back than that. Nevertheless, for a significant period thereafter,

it remained something of an obscure ritual,

one observed by the imperial family and dedicated to the goddess Tai Yin Xinjun, the deified

iteration of Queen Jiang of Shang, who had stood in opposition, ultimately at the cost of her own

life, to the evil of the fox spirit Daji at the end of the Shang Dynasty, and for which

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