Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival grew out of farming life. The full moon of the eighth month marks the turn into autumn, when field work slows and the crop waits to be harvested. Farmers of old read the moon to judge the weather and the season: a clear, bright moon promised a good harvest, a hazy one meant worry. The full-moon night was both a night of rest and a night of hope for a fine rice crop.

Moon viewing, the festive table and lantern parades owe something to China, yet over the centuries Vietnamese people gave Mid-Autumn a character of their own. The table holds pomelo, persimmon, bananas and green rice flakes from the northern countryside, a little dog made of pomelo segments and a five-pointed star lantern covered in red cellophane, and above all children became the stars of the night.

The old tale says Cuội was a woodcutter who stumbled upon a magic banyan tree whose leaves could cure any illness. He told his wife to water it only with clean water. One day she forgot and poured dirty water on it. The tree tore up its roots and rose into the sky; Cuội ran after it, grabbed the roots and was carried all the way to the moon. Ever since, on each full moon, people below can see Cuội sitting at the foot of his banyan.

Also living on the moon is the Moon Lady, a beautiful fairy with a jade rabbit for company. The two of them live on in nursery rhymes, songs and children's games. For many generations, looking up at the full moon to find the shape of the banyan and of Cuội is a childhood memory that never fades, tied to the voices of grandparents telling stories in the yard.

Cuội sits at the foot of the banyan / Letting the buffalo eat the rice while he calls for his father

Vietnamese folk verse

Historical records mention Mid-Autumn lantern festivals in the capital Thăng Long as early as the Lý dynasty. In the later Lê period, Phạm Đình Hổ described in his Vũ trung tuỳ bút how the Trịnh lords' palace hung lanterns, set out feasts and built elaborate lanterns in the shape of people and animals every eighth-month full moon. Among ordinary people, the craft streets of Hàng Mã and Hàng Lược made lanterns, revolving lanterns and papier-mâché masks for children all over the capital.

The revolving lantern is a special toy: the heat of a candle spins a paper vane that sends little paper figures running in a circle, casting their shadows on the lantern wall. Together with star lanterns, carp lanterns, masks and coloured rice-dough figurines, it makes a toy season that many craft villages still keep alive today.

In the autumn of 1945, only days after the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was founded, President Hồ Chí Minh wrote to the nation's children for the first Mid-Autumn Festival of independence. In the years that followed, even during the war of resistance, he kept writing to the children every moon season, urging them to study hard, behave well and love their country.

His Mid-Autumn letter of 1951 opens with verses that generations of schoolchildren know by heart. Through those letters, Mid-Autumn in Vietnam became ever more clearly the children's festival: a time when adults give children their attention, their toys and lantern parades in every village and neighbourhood.

The Mid-Autumn moon shines like a mirror / Uncle Hồ gazes at it and thinks fondly of the children

Mid-Autumn letter of 1951, President Hồ Chí Minh

From the start of the eighth lunar month, Hàng Mã street in Hà Nội, the Lương Nhữ Học lantern street in Hồ Chí Minh City and the old town of Hội An are ablaze with colour. Lion-dance troupes with drums, the Earth God and plenty of laughter wind through every alley. Schools, neighbourhoods and many companies hold festival nights and hand out gifts, mooncakes and lanterns to children.

For working people, Mid-Autumn is a time to bring mooncakes to grandparents and parents and to send greetings to partners and clients. Many companies host moon-viewing parties for their employees' families. However busy they are, most Vietnamese still try to be home on the full-moon night, sitting together under the moon, sharing a slice of mooncake and listening to children sing beneath their star lanterns.