Siheyuan starts from a better life

Chapter 884 Mid-Autumn Festival

Since purchasing the farm, Shitou has been extremely busy. Xu Damao has been traveling all over Southeast Asia to sell beverages and instant noodles. So he simply brought Lou Xiaoe and the child back with him, and Ran Qiuye and the child also came back with her.

It is said that the culture of our country has a strong centripetal force. Not long after returning, the young masters and young ladies from Hong Kong in Xu Damao's family have been transformed by the people of our city. They speak authentic Beijing dialect and run around with the children of Jiang Yan and other families every day.

Unlike the others, Jiang Yan is busy all the time. He only checks on the progress of the pickup truck from time to time. When developing the pickup truck, Jiang Yan thought about it a lot. He is ready to add a production line specifically for the production of cars. Jiang Yan has already made the drawings for the production of cars, but all this has to wait until the Mid-Autumn Festival. After being busy for so long, Jiang Yan also wants to have a good Mid-Autumn Festival.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, Moonlight Festival, Moon Eve, Autumn Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Moon Worship Festival, Moon Goddess Festival, Moon Festival, Reunion Festival, etc., is a traditional Chinese folk festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival originated from the worship of celestial phenomena and evolved from the ancient autumn moon worship.

The original "Moon Festival" was held on the "Autumnal Equinox" of the 24th solar term in the Chinese zodiac calendar. Later, it was moved to the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. Some places also set the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 16th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. Since ancient times, the Mid-Autumn Festival has had folk customs such as worshiping the moon, appreciating the moon, eating moon cakes, playing with lanterns, appreciating osmanthus flowers, and drinking osmanthus wine. These customs have been passed down to this day and have lasted for a long time.

The Mid-Autumn Festival originated in ancient times, became popular in the Han Dynasty, was finalized in the early Tang Dynasty, and became popular after the Song Dynasty. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a combination of autumn seasonal customs, and most of the festival factors it contains have ancient origins. The Mid-Autumn Festival uses the roundness of the moon to foreshadow family reunion, to express the longing for hometown and relatives, and to pray for a good harvest and happiness. It has become a colorful and precious cultural heritage. The Mid-Autumn Festival is known as one of the four major traditional festivals in my country, along with the Spring Festival, Qingming Festival, and Dragon Boat Festival. Influenced by Chinese culture, the Mid-Autumn Festival is also a traditional festival for some countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, especially for local Chinese and overseas Chinese.

"On the 15th day of the eighth month, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, plates are filled with fruits and mooncakes." This famous proverb describes the grand and festive scene in which the old people of Sijiucheng celebrate the festival.

Every year, just after the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, fruits from the suburbs of Beijing, Hebei, Henan, Shandong and other places begin to be put on the market. The fruit stalls in the shops are lined up, and the wormwood under the fruits and the fresh fruits on top give off a refreshing fragrance. On the first day of August, the vegetable beds of the oil and salt shops are filled with rich and bright cockscomb flowers and edamame branches full of bean pods. The dry goods stores have added expensive early-flowering watermelons. The rabbit figurine stalls are full of dazzling goods, and the moon cakes in the pastry shops are starting to come out of the oven. The whole city is filled with a festive atmosphere.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is closely related to the moon, and people have long worshipped the moon. The moon worship during the Autumnal Equinox began in the Zhou Dynasty, and the moon appreciation during the Mid-Autumn Festival began in the Wei and Jin Dynasties and flourished in the Tang Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, August 40 was officially designated as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Su Dongpo's "Water Melody·When Will the Bright Moon Appear" in the Northern Song Dynasty has become a masterpiece through the ages, and "May we live long and share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands of miles apart" is a household name. Until the late s, old BJ still had the custom of worshipping the moon. In addition, there has been a tradition since ancient times that "men do not worship the moon, and women do not worship the kitchen god." In Nanjing, the Mid-Autumn Festival is also called the "Daughter's Day." There is another meaning for girls to worship the moon, which is to "look like Chang'e and have a face like the bright moon."

At dusk on the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the bright moon rises, the women of every household will set up an incense table in the southeast of the courtyard and offer the "Moonlight Horse". There are at least three plates of moon cakes and three plates of fruits on the table. In front of the table are edamame branches, cockscomb flowers, lotus petals cut into lotus petal shapes, and nine-node lotus roots. The women worship the moon one by one. After the sacrifice, the family sits around the table, drinks reunion wine, and shares reunion moon cakes, all in great joy. This is the ancient custom of worshiping the moon. The Moonlight Horse (also known as the Moon Horse) is the image of the Moon God. On a paper screen that is seven or eight feet long or two or three feet short, the Bodhisattva-like Taiyin Star God is painted with brilliant gold and jade colors. Below it are the Moon Palace laurel trees and the long-eared Dingguang fairy who pounded medicine - the Jade Rabbit. The image of the Jade Rabbit is a human standing and holding a pestle. This is the evolution from the Taoist-dominated images of Chang'e and the Moon Palace before the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the secular image of the Moonlight Bodhisattva and the Jade Rabbit pounding medicine, which is a blend of Buddhism and Taoism.

Rabbit God originated in the late Ming Dynasty. It was originally modeled after the image of the Jade Rabbit on the "Moonlight Horse". In the Qing Dynasty, Rabbit God was not necessarily placed during the Moon Festival, and later became a toy. Therefore, Rabbit God was left to the imagination of folk artists and developed into a dramatic, customary, and personified artwork. The large Rabbit God is three feet, and the small one is three or four inches. It is usually a theatrical costume, and its mount is varied, including lions, tigers, elephants, deer, phoenixes, cranes, cows, horses, peacocks, unicorns, etc. In the past, Rabbit God was abandoned once a year, so there is a idiom: "The Rabbit God of the next year is an old man."

Eating mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival has a long history. It is said that mooncakes originated from the food for military celebrations in the Tang Dynasty. Su Dongpo in the Northern Song Dynasty wrote a poem as evidence: "The small cakes are like chewing the moon, with crisp and sweet fillings inside." In the past, the people of Old Sijiucheng ate three main types of mooncakes: self-made red, self-made white, and mooncakes with syrup (i.e. reunion cakes). Later, there were "flipped hair", "laipi" and Guangdong mooncakes. During the festival, the people of Old Sijiucheng also liked to make their own mooncakes. In "Wanshu Miscellaneous Notes", Shen Bang recorded the grand occasion of making mooncakes in BJ during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Ming Dynasty: the people of the neighborhood all "made dough cakes and passed them on to each other, of different sizes, and called them mooncakes". Unfortunately, this custom no longer exists. The mooncakes of Old BJ were made by "Zhimeizhai" outside the former gate, which was the best, especially because it also made and sold hot mooncakes.

However, every year during the holidays, with Chef He at home, mooncakes are naturally indispensable. The elderly and children in the family love to eat the date paste mooncakes made by He Yuzhu the most, but the old lady and Jiang Yan still like to eat the old-fashioned five-nut mooncakes the most.

The five nuts in the five-nut mooncake refer to olive kernels, walnuts, black melon seeds, white sesame seeds and almonds. Sugar-coated winter melon and ice meat are also added to the mixture of tangerine cakes. Five-nut mooncakes are not freshly baked and can be tasted immediately. Instead, they are best tasted after being cooled for 2 to 3 days until the cake becomes soft and oily. The authentic five-nut mooncake exudes the fragrance of nuts and citrus. You can feel the softness of the filling when you put it in your mouth. You will find the rich taste of nuts when you chew it slowly. With the sweet fragrance of ice meat, the overall taste is crispy and soft, fragrant but not greasy.

However, the later five-nut mooncakes cut corners so much that the five-nut mooncakes were no longer five-nut mooncakes.

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival, Jiang Yan and his family planned to celebrate in the newly renovated courtyard house. Although Jiang Yan had lived in the three-courtyard courtyard house he bought for a while, he later bought back the villa next door. Plus, Jiang Yan had no shortage of money, so he simply bought back all the villas on the right, including the carriage and horse yard and the yard where the servants used to live. That made almost two more villas.

Since this villa was modified later, it is a little different from the original one. After discussing with Lei Lao San, Jiang Yan decided to renovate the courtyard as a whole and try to make modern improvements. Even if there are things that are not there now, Jiang Yan has reserved room for renovation. After more than half a year of improvements, the courtyard can finally be delivered. We just moved into the courtyard a few days ago, so Jiang Yan wanted to hold this year's Mid-Autumn Festival in this courtyard.

(End of this chapter)