Pop quiz: what Taiwanese holiday brings together the full moon, cute rabbits, delicious pastries, grilling parties, fruit-peel lanterns, and mythical couples in complicated relationships? The answer, of course, is the Mid-Autumn Festival!
Whether it’s your first year living here or your twentieth, here’s a fun explainer about this annual public holiday celebrated and advertised across Taiwan — so you can properly celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on your day off!
When Do People Celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?
Mid-Autumn Festival or Zhōng Qiū Jié in Mandarin Chinese (中秋節) is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar — meaning it usually takes place in September or October in the western calendar.
This year in 2025, the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on October 6 — conveniently close to Double Ten Day!
How Do People Celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?
Like most holidays in Taiwan, you eat, eat, and then eat some more.
Eat Mooncake: Mooncakes (月餅) are iconic delicacies that hold a central place in the celebrations of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Read more about mooncakes in the next section down!
Eat Pomelos: The harvest season for pomelos happens to be autumn, so this fruity symbol of good fortune was a match made in heaven. This giant citrus (literally, Citrus maxima is its botanical name) is seen as a representation of family togetherness and prosperity — pomelo in Mandarin Chinese is “Yòu Zǐ” (柚子), with the first character homophonous with the character for “protection” (佑). A fun tradition is to carefully cut the pomelo peel into funny hats that kids can wear.
Grill Together: Barbecuing during the Mid-Autumn Festival is a classic Taiwanese activity. Some say the trend began with an excess of grills being manufactured for export, others say it coincided with a boom in camping and grilling. Whatever laid the groundwork, Taiwan TV commercials in the 1980s for Wan Ja Shan barbecue sauce and Kimlan barbecue sauce ingrained the tradition that continues to this day.
Exchange Gifts: It’s a traditional holiday and it’s Taiwan, so that means more exchanging of gifts! Indeed, mooncakes and pomelos are often exchanged as gifts during the Mid-Autumn Festival. And as with extra zongzi after the Dragon Boat Festival, you will be spending days trying to regift and rehome all your extra mooncakes, to better spread out all that cholesterol and calories…
Go See Lanterns: Although it’s not the lantern festival — that would be Yuán Xiāo / Guân Siau / NgienˇSeuˊ ( 元宵節) — which takes place on the 15th day of the first lunar month — the Mid-Autumn Festival still sees its fair share of lanterns. In fact, you can make lanterns out of your pomelo! How about that?
What Is Inside Mooncakes in Taiwan?
Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in Taiwan is truly about stuffing your face full of mooncakes. But did you know that mooncake doughs and fillings are as varied as the places that make and eat them?
Across the regions and cultures that eat mooncakes, fillings range from ham, scallions, seafood, and chicken, lotus seed paste, sweet bean paste, jujube paste, and seed and nuts — and doughs range from glistening crystal ones made from sago to richly chewy crusts.
It’s the richly chewy “pie-crust” mooncakes — with artistic exteriors shaped by decorative molds and stuffed with salty whole egg yolks — that many international travelers may be familiar with. But here’s another twist: that style is specific to Cantonese mooncakes.
So what goes inside and outside of a Taiwan-style mooncake, then?
Taiwan-style mooncakes come in two styles. One is similar to the pie-crust version, also shaped in traditional wooden molds.
But the mooncake style more special to Taiwan has more of a flaky, layered crust, hand-molded into a round, hemispheric shape. The crust is often lighter in color, from almost white to ones with more eggwash browning. The top is stamped with red food coloring ink, either just for decoration or identifying whether the filling is savory or sweet. Mung bean paste is the classic Taiwan mooncake filling, while some mix bean paste with savory pork; other variations boast red bean paste plus salty egg yolk.
Why Do People Celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival?
Cultures across Asia celebrate holidays similar to Mid-Autumn Festival on this same lunar anniversary, including Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and more — celebrating autumn harvests and unity for families and friendships. Taiwan’s Mid-Autumn Festival traditions were inherited from Chinese culture, with the earliest known mention in texts found from 2nd century B.C., in the time of the Han Dynasty.
Besides agricultural harvests and family bonding, the holiday was originally connected with moon worship. The embodiment of this tradition is the myth of Chang’e (嫦娥) — the “lady in the moon” of Chinese fairytales.
Most versions of the myth start with the same premise: Chang’e was the beautiful wife of Hou Yi (后羿), a great hero who lived in a time when ten suns existed, scorching the land. Hou Yi vanquished nine of the suns with his bow and arrows, leaving one to provide light.
The myth branches off into two popular endings. In one ending, that herculean feat earned Hou Yi a pill or elixir of immortality. But a greedy apprentice attempts to steal this immortal potion. To prevent this theft, Chang’e swallows the elixir, which lifts her to the heavens where she chose to reside in the moon. Despondent of his lost love, Hou Yi would pray to the moon with the cakes and pomelos that she loved.
The other ending has a darker twist. Here, Hou Yi became a tyrannical ruler who sought and obtained the immortality elixir. To save the commoners from a future of cruelty, Chang’e drank the potion herself, and the people went on to commemorate her sacrifice.
As with all traditions, multiple myths end up blending over time. For the tale of Chang’e, her lunar palace would eventually grow to include a rabbit companion. The 2020 Netflix animated movie Over the Moon remixes the Chang’e and jade rabbit story. And decades earlier, Chang’e and the jade rabbit were both named dropped by U.S. astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission when human beings landed on the moon for the first time. Astronaut Michael Collins replied to Houston: “Okay, we’ll keep a close eye for the bunny girl”
Why Didn’t I Buy Train Tickets Earlier?
Friends, let that be a lesson to remember for the next big public holiday in Taiwan if you’re trying to take advantage of a three-day weekend.
As always, book your train and HSR tickets as early as you can ahead of “red letter holidays” in Taiwan like the Mid-Autumn Festival. And watch out for price surges at hotels! Or just stay back in the city and join the throngs of your fellow Taiwanese out shopping and browsing.
Not into the mobs of people in packed department stores and tourist traps? Remember, you can always just have a quiet night and look up at the full moon, to enjoy the simple harvests of your own personal season — and savor the original spirit of the Mid-Autumn Festival here in Taiwan.
