What are the festival customs in Beginning of Autumn?

What are the customs of the Beginning of Autumn?

The Beginning of Autumn Festival is also called the July Festival. It starts on August 7 or 8 every year in the Gregorian calendar. In the Zhou Dynasty, on that day, the emperor personally led the three gongs and six ministers, princes and officials to the western suburbs to welcome the autumn, and held the ceremony of offering sacrifices to Shaowu and the harvest (see "Rites and Sacrifice·Yue Ling"). This custom was still carried on in the Han Dynasty. "Book of the Later Han·Sacrifice Chronicles": "On the day of the beginning of autumn, we welcome the autumn in the western suburbs and offer sacrifices to the White Emperor. All the carriages, flags and costumes are white. We sing the song "Xi Hao" and the Eight Yi dance "Yu Ming". There is also the emperor's performance. Shooting animals in the garden was a ritual to recommend to the ancestral temple. Killing animals as a sacrifice signified the coming of autumn."

In the Tang Dynasty, sacrifices were also made to the Five Emperors on the first day of autumn. "New Book of Tang·Book of Rites and Music": "At the beginning of autumn and the beginning of winter, the Five Emperors were worshiped in the surrounding suburbs." In the Song Dynasty, on the day of the beginning of autumn, both men and women wore catalpa leaves to match the time sequence. There is a custom of cutting petals from heather and inserting them into hairpins on the temples, and there is also a custom of swallowing seven small red beans with autumn water (see "Lin'an Chronicles"), a custom inherited from the Song Dynasty in the Ming Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, on the Beginning of Autumn Festival, people were weighed by hanging scales and compared with the number weighed on the Beginning of Summer to test whether they were fat or thin in the middle of summer. Since the Republic of China, in the vast rural areas, there has been a custom of predicting whether the weather will be hot or cold during the day or night at the beginning of autumn. There is also the custom of eating watermelon and green beans to try new things and pay homage to ancestors. On the day before the beginning of autumn, it is also customary to drink iced melon, steamed preserved eggplant, and fry fragrant sage.

At the beginning of autumn, the sycamore trees will definitely begin to lose their leaves, hence the idiom "One leaf falls to tell you the autumn". Autumn includes the six solar terms of Beginning of Autumn, End of Heat, White Dew, Autumnal Equinox, Cold Dew and Frost. It is a transitional season from hot to cool, and then from cool to cold.