The Mid Autumn Festival, Zhongqiu Jie, falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, timed to the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox, and is one of the most widely observed festivals in the Chinese calendar after the New Year, centered on family reunion, moon viewing, and the eating of mooncakes, dense pastries traditionally filled with lotus seed or red bean paste and often stamped with decorative designs. The festival's association with the full moon draws on a rich body of lunar mythology, most prominently the story of Chang'e, who is said to have ascended to the moon after consuming an elixir of immortality, and whose companion, the Jade Rabbit, is traditionally depicted pounding herbs on the lunar surface, a figure widely recognized across East Asian cultures that share related lunar festival traditions.
Because the festival falls so close to harvest time in much of China, it also carries an agricultural dimension distinct from its lunar mythology, a thanksgiving for the season's gathered crops that predates, and runs alongside, the reunion and moon viewing customs most associated with the holiday today, reflecting autumn's broader identity across many calendar systems as the season in which a year's agricultural labor is brought to its conclusion.