Mid Autumn Festival story and how Chinese celebrate it

As the legend goes, in the distant past, there was a beautiful woman called Chang'e. Her husband Houyi was a brilliant archer. At that time, there were ten suns in the sky, and the people on earth were living in the blistering heat. To save the earth, Houyi used his bow and arrow to shoot down nine of the suns. Houyi was respected as the national hero and received an elixir of immortality as a reward for saving the people from the heat of multiple suns. However, the elixir only had enough for one person, and both Chang'e and Houyi didn't want to leave each other. But one day, one of Houyi's students tried to steal the elixir when he wasn't home. In order to protect the elixir from thieves, Chang'e took the magic elixir of immortality. Then she flew to the moon and became the moon goddess, leaving her husband behind. Alone on earth, Houyi missed his wife so much that he made an offering to the moon and tried to find the shape of Chang'e on the moon. To remember Chang'e, Chinese people worshipped the moon by eating fruit and moon-shaped desserts called moon cakes. This is the legend of the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is also called the Moon Festival. Nowadays, the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is also a harvest festival, has become a family holiday like Thanksgiving. Chinese people celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival by having a large dinner with family, worshipping the moon with gifts, traveling, viewing lantern shows, eating various desserts, and flying lanterns to pray for their happiness and the happiness of their families. Search China Highlights Mid-Autumn Festival to get more information.