The most common traditions for Mid-Autumn Festival are eating mooncakes and gazing at the moon. Ethnic minority people has their own customs to celebrate the festival.

A new way of celebrating in recent years, as mobile phone have become ubiquitous in China, is sending text messages to wish to each other well. See Mid-Autumns Greetings for some of the types of messages that are sent.

Gazing at the Moon

The origins of appreciating the moon as a custom can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty (618–907).

Nowadays, people still like appreciating the moon on Mid-Autumn Festival in China. Chinese family members have dinner together in the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival. After the dinner, they may talk about their work, the children, and their future plans. Sometimes, people go to a park to see the decorations made for the festival.

Eating Moon Cakes

Eating mooncakes is the most popular celebration of the day. Mooncakes are traditionally Chinese pastries, which is made of wheat flour and sweet stuffings such as sugar and lotus seed powder. Moon cake is a symbol of family reunion, and the cake is traditionally cut into pieces that equal to the number of people in the family.

Making Chinese Mid-Autumn Lanterns

Mid-Autumn lanterns are not as colorful as those of the Lantern Festival. There is no big lantern party during Mid-Autumn Festival, but children like making colorful lanterns very much. They make lanterns of different shapes and let them float on the rivers. They don’t leave the riverside until the light of the lanterns disappears. Sometimes, they make Kongming (Hung Ming) lanterns, which can fly because the burning candles heat the air in the lantern. The lantern rises with the heated air.