What are the customs for Wenzhou people to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?

The custom of Wenzhou people's Mid-Autumn Festival is to set off river lanterns.

The fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month is the Mid-Autumn Festival. In the old society, people lacked scientific common sense and thought that this day was a ghost festival and an unknowable day, so they regarded the river lantern as a ghost. With the progress of the times, the river lantern has been handed down as a folk craft activity. During the First World Wenzhou People's Congress in 2002, the villagers who left home as children held a river lantern ceremony at the Green Lake in Jiang Xinyu, and put colorful water lanterns into the water to go with the flow, sending good wishes to their hometown.

Wenzhou has a folk proverb about July of the lunar calendar: "Birds rain in July and birds sing in August", which means that when it rains in July and August of the lunar calendar, people can have more leisure. "Pomegranate in July, pear in August and persimmon in September" are the mature stages of various fruits; "In July, the winter clouds are full of water", which is a metaphor for July in the lunar calendar. In case of clouds in the east, it often rains; "There is no rain in July and no frost in October", which is the conclusion drawn by farmers according to the perennial weather.

In the seventh month of the lunar calendar, Wenzhou people have always had three holiday customs that are more attentive. In addition to the Lantern Festival, there are:

Send smart food

"On July 7th, I ate magpies." The seventh day of the seventh lunar month is the traditional "Qixi Festival", also called "Seven Clever Days". Grandparents will give their own "smart dishes" to their grandchildren, and make them into finger shapes specially, wishing their children a pair of skillful hands when they grow up. In the past, Wenzhou people born on this day were also named after Joe, for example, a boy named Aqiao He and a girl named He.

Delicious ball

The last day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar is regarded as the birthday of the Tibetan King Bodhisattva. That night, everyone put the lit incense in Wendan or grapefruit and hung it in front of the window and behind the house, shining everywhere. There are also many families who insert incense sticks directly in the yard or on the roadside, intentionally inserting incense on the words "balance in the world" to express their good wishes.