The Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese Moon Festival is an important traditional festivity second only to the Spring Festival. Celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month in Chinese lunar calendar, the Moon Festival usually comes sometime between the second week of September and the second week of October.Mid-Autumn day is a time when people celebrate the harvest, enjoy the getting-together with families and friends and appreciate good food and the most beautiful moon.

Chinese ancestors took the seventh, eighth and ninth lunar months as autumn and 15th day of the eighth lunar month as the Moon Day which was considered the best day of the year to enjoy the beautiful, round and bright moon.

A harvest festival, Moon Day is a time for relaxation and celebration and most importantly, reunion of families. In the past, food offerings were placed on an altar set up in the courtyard. Special food for the festival included moon cakes and cooked taro, edible snails from the taro patches or rice paddies cooked with sweet basil, and water caltrope, a type of water chestnut resembling black buffalo horns. Some people insisted that cooked taro be included because at the time of creation, taro was the first food discovered at night in the moonlight.