- 相关推荐
中秋节的历史英文介绍
中秋节的历史英文介绍
【范文一】
"Zhong Qiu Jie", which is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar.
It is a time for family members and loved ones to congregate and enjoy the full moon - an auspicious symbol of abundance, harmony and luck. Adults will usually indulge in fragrant mooncakes of many varieties with a good cup of piping hot Chinese tea, while the little ones run around with their brightly-lit lanterns.
"Zhong Qiu Jie" probably began as a harvest festival. The festival was later given a mythological flavour with legends of Chang-E, the beautiful lady in the moon.
According to Chinese mythology, the earth once had 10 suns circling over it.
One day, all 10 suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved when a strong archer, Hou Yi, succeeded in shooting down 9 of the suns.
Yi stole the elixir of life to save the people from his tyrannical rule, but his wife, Chang-E drank it. Thus started the legend of the lady in the moon to whom young Chinese girls would pray at the Mid-Autumn Festival.
In the 14th century, the eating of mooncakes at "Zhong Qiu Jie" was given a new significance. The story goes that when Zhu Yuan Zhang was plotting to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty started by the Mongolians, the rebels hid their messages in the Mid-Autumn mooncakes. Zhong Qiu Jie is hence also a commemoration of the overthrow of the Mongolians by the Han people.
During the Yuan Dynasty (A.D.1206-1368) China was ruled by the Mongolian people. Leaders from the preceding Sung Dynasty(A.D.960-1279) were unhappy at submitting to foreign rule, and set how to coordinate the rebellion without it being discovered. The leaders of the rebellion, knowing that the Moon Festival was drawing near, ordered the making of special cakes.
Packed into each mooncake was a message with the outline of the attack. On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels successfully attacked and overthrew the government. What followed was the establishment of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). Today, moon cakes are eaten to commemorate this event.
Mid-Autumn Day is a traditional festival in China. Almost everyone likes to eat mooncakes on that day. Most families have a dinner together to celebrate the festival.
A saying goes, "The moon in your hometown is almost always the brightest and roundest". Many people who live far away from homes want to go back to have a family reunion. How happy it is to enjoy the moon cakes while watching the full moon with your family members.
【范文二】
Celebration of Mid-autumn festival has a long history.
In ancient times, the emperors had the tradition of worshiping the Sun in spring, and the Moon in autumn. The word "Mid-Autumn" first appeared in the famous ancient book "Zhou Li" (The Zhou Rituals, a book telling the rituals in the Zhou Dynasty).
However, it was not until the early Tang Dynasty that the day was officially celebrated as a traditional festival.
It became a established festival during the Song Dynasty, and has become as popular as the Spring Festival since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Celebrations has continued ever since and more customs for marking this occasion have been formed.
There are several explanations on when and where the festival began and some of the most convincing versions are as follows:
Version One: Nanjing and Mid-autumn Festival
A much-told story about the beginning of the Mid-autumn Festival celebration comes from Niuzhu (a place in ancient Nanjing).
As early as 1,600 years ago, Nanjing which was called Jianye served as capital of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. On a Mid-autumn night when Xie Shangyue, the governor of Niuzhu, was boating on a river he met Yuan Hong, a poor, frustrated but gifted scholar who had to earn his living by renting boats.
Admiring his ability, Xie made friend with him and Yuan had a rise to fame with the help of Xie. Later on, having heard of the story, many refined scholars from all over the country followed suit to boat in the river, climb up the towers, and watch the moon.
Famous poets like Li Bai and Ou Yangzhan were all touched by the story, and then wrote numbers of poems about it. Because of this, the tradition of watching the moon on Mid-Autumn Festival gradually came into being.
Version Two: Season and Climate
The Mid-Autumn day is the very moment of rice maturity. And at that day farmers will worship the local God of land, whose birthday is exactly on that day.
Mid-Autumn day is possibly an old tradition of telling the coming of autumn. In terms of the seasons in a year, the Mid-Autumn day can be named as "Harvest Day", when the crops sowed in the spring can be reaped.
Since ancient times, people would drink, dance, and sing on that day, celebrating the harvest.
This scene can be found in the Books of Odes (the earliest collection of poems in ancient China).
According to the previous descriptions, the ancient emperors had the tradition of worshiping the moon, yet the day was initially on the day of Autumn Equinox, and not on the Mid-Autumn day.
However, the Autumn Equinox is not a fixed day and there may or may not be a full moon on that day.
Therefore, the day for worshipping the moon was accepted as a convention on the Mid-Autumn day, when the moon is in its fullest.
Meanwhile, it's proven by scientific research that the inclination of the earth and the sun will gradually increase in autumn, thus the cool air up in the sky will fade away while the northwest wind is still very weak. In this way, the moisture is removed and the air in the sky would become pure and clean. So the moon would appear to be relatively fuller and bigger. And this would be the best time to appreciate the beauty of the moon.
Version Three: Moon Cake
The tradition of eating moon-cakes on this festival has a long history in China, yet there are different versions of statements about its origin.
The most common version is that during the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, Taizong ordered his ablest general Li Jing to go for a battle against the Turkic clan in north ancient China to suppress their frequent invasions.
The 15th day of the 8th month was exactly the day for the general's triumphant return. In order to celebrate his victory, fireworks were set off and music was played in and out of Chang'an City (the capital of the Tang dynasty), and citizens were happily enjoying a riotous night together with warriors. At that time, a business man, coming from the Tubo Kingdom (the ancient name for Tibet), presented Taizong with a kind of round cakes to celebrate Tang's victory.
Taizong gladly received the magnificently-decorated boxes and took the multi-colored round cakes out of the boxes and handed them out to his officials and generals. From then on, the tradition of eating round moon-cakes on the Mid-Autumn Festival was formed.
Versions Four: Wuyan
One of the legends behind this festival tells the story of a plain girl named Wuyan, who was from Qi; an ancient nation in China. Wuyan was chosen for the Emperor's palace because of her outstanding morality but she never attracted the attention of the Emperor due to her appearance.
However, as a youngster Wuyan had worshipped the Moon and this gave her special powers so that on the night of the 15th of August, when she met the emperor in the moonlight, he saw her as beautiful and fell in love with her immediately. Wuyan later married the Emperor and became the queen of Qi, and from this moment on the tradition of worshipping the Moon on the 15th of August began.
However, young Chinese ladies to also worship the Moon for another reason - in the hope that they can become as beautiful as Chang'e, a girl who, according to Chinese legend, lives in the moon.
【中秋节的历史英文介绍】相关文章：
中秋节习俗英文介绍10-09
中秋节介绍英文版11-17
印度英文介绍03-31
英文景点介绍10-06
历史自我介绍06-29
惠安石雕的历史与介绍08-31
中秋节资料英文09-09
英文自我介绍05-22
英文介绍信11-22
英文的介绍信07-03