Tết Trung Thu (chữ Hán: 節中秋) is a traditional Vietnamese festival held from the night of the 14th to the end of the 15th of the 8th lunar month (Rằm tháng Tám, chữ Nôm: 𠄻躺渗). Despite its Chinese origin, the festival has recently evolved into a children's festival (Tết Thiếu Nhi), also known as Tết Trông Trăng, Tết Đoàn Viên or Tết Hoa Đăng. Children look forward to this day because they are often given toys by adults, typically including a star lamp, a mask, a kéo quân lamp, and a tò he (edible toy figurines), and eat bánh trung thu (mooncakes – bánh nướng and bánh dẻo). People organize a feast to watch the Moon and when the Moon is high, children sing and dance while watching the full moon. In some places people also organize lion dances or dragon dances for the children to enjoy.
Origins
Tết Trung Thu originated from Chinese culture, with three main legends that are associated with the festival: the story of Chang'e and Hou Yi, Emperor Tang Ming Huang's ascent to the moon in China, and the story of Uncle Cuội of Vietnam. The Chinese have celebrated the harvest during the autumn full moon since the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). The term mid-autumn (中秋) first appeared in Rites of Zhou, a written collection of rituals from the Western Zhou dynasty (1046–771 BCE). The celebration as a festival only started to gain popularity during the early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). One legend explains that Emperor Xuanzong of Tang started to hold formal celebrations in his palace after exploring the Moon Palace. According to Phan Kế Bính in the book of Việt Nam phong tục, the custom of hanging lights to display the feast was due to the ancient scriptures about Emperor Tang Ming Huang. On the emperor's birthday, he would order people to hang lights everywhere and arrange a party to celebrate, and it has since become a custom. The tradition of lantern processions dates back to the Song dynasty, due to a story that during the reign of Emperor Song Renzong in China, a carp transformed into a monster, and every night the Moon appeared to turn into a girl to harm people. In response, Bao Gong, a new official ordered the folk to make a fish lamp like the carp's image and bring it out to play in the street. This aimed to scare the monster so that it would not dare harm the people. Phan Kế Bính also stated that the custom of trống quân singing dates back to the reign of Emperor Quang Trung – Nguyễn Huệ, "when he brought troops to the North. Many soldiers were homesick." To lift up their spirits and alleviate their homesickness, Nguyễn Huệ presented a way for both sides to pretend to be boys and girls, singing and responding to each other. This was accompanied by a drum beat, hence the name trống quân (military drum).
Activities and customs
Children's toys in Tết Trung Thu are made of paper and shaped like creatures such as butterflies, mantises, elephants, horses, unicorns, lions, dragons, deer, shrimps, and fish. During the evenings of the festival, children play tug and catch, and have a procession of lanterns, lions, drums, and Thanh la, a percussion instrument. In the evening when the full moon has just risen, people buy moon cakes, tea, and wine to worship their ancestors. Also on this day, people often give mooncakes, fruits, tea and wine to their grandparents, parents, teachers, friends, relatives and other benefactors. The Chinese often organize dragon dances during Tết Trung Thu, while the Vietnamese do lion dances. The lion symbolizes luck and prosperity and is a good omen for all families. In the past, Vietnamese people also held trống quân singing and hung lanterns in kéo quân during the festival. The drums are sung to the rhythm of three "thình, thùng, thình". According to Vietnamese customs, during Tết Trung Thu, adults arrange parties for children to celebrate and buy or make various candle-lit lanterns to hang in the house and let the children participate in lantern processions. Tết Trung Thu celebrations often includes moon cakes, candies, sugar cane, grapefruit and other fruits.
Lantern procession In some rural areas, where neighbors have closer relationships, people often organize so children can carry lanterns together through villages, hamlets and neighborhoods on the Tết Trung Thu night. Lantern festivals can be initiated by the local government or by youth groups in the village. Participants compete to have the largest or prettiest lanterns in the procession. In Phan Thiết (Bình Thuận), a large-scale lantern procession was held with thousands of elementary and junior high school students marching through the streets. This festival was set as the largest record in Vietnam. It is a traditional mid-autumn lantern procession festival dating back hundreds of years, and the scale of the festival in Phan Thiết increases every year, but also becomes more "commercial". In Tuyên Quang, there is also a large lantern procession festival, fully mobilized from the creativity of the people, from village to village, which has not been commercialized.
Lion dance
Lion dance is usually held before the Tết Trung Thu, with the most busiest nights being the fourteenth and fifteenth nights.
Party
Typically, the focus of Tết Trung Thu celebratory food is a dog is made of grapefruit cloves, with two black beans attached as eyes. Surrounding the dog, there are fruits and cakes, like bánh nướng (baked mooncakes), bánh dẻo (sticky rice mooncakes) or vegetarian cakes, which are usually in the shape of a mother pig with a herd of chubby piglets, or carp. Grapefruit seeds are usually peeled and skewered on steel wires, dried for 2–3 weeks before the full moon, and on the Tết Trung Thu night, the strings of grapefruit seeds are displayed. The typical fruit and food elements of this occasion are bananas, nuggets, apricots, red and blue pickled persimmons, daisies, and grapefruit. The feast begins when the moon reaches the zenith. The custom of looking at the Moon is associated with the legend of Uncle Cuội, who found his precious banyan tree uprooted and flying into the sky one day. Clinging to the tree roots, he flew to the Moon with the tree. Looking up at the Moon, one can see a clear black spot in the shape of an old tree with people sitting under it, and children believe that it is a picture of Uncle Cuội sitting at the base of a banyan tree.
Toys
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