The origin of the Mid-Yuan Festival is that the Taoists believed that the earthly officials would descend to the mortal world on the 15th of July to determine the good and evil on earth, so they performed the jiao-festival on this day to recommend good fortune, which later evolved into a day of ancestor worship in the folklore. After Buddhism entered China, the Bon Festival was held on July 15, where Buddhists offered sumptuous sacrifices to the Three Jewels in order to relieve the suffering of the ancestors who were hanging upside down. By the Tang and Song dynasties, all these ceremonies were absorbed into the folklore of ancestor worship on the Mid-Yuan Festival and continued. As for the Mid-Yuan Festival customs in various periods and places in history, they also differed.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the Mid-Yuan Festival, like the Lantern Festival, had to display lanterns all over the place to show the prosperity of the festival, a custom that was abolished after Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty ascended to the throne. In the Southern Song Dynasty, a few days before the Mid-Yuan Festival, stores began to sell paper shoes and boots, headscarves and hats, and colorful clothes for people to burn and dedicate to the spirits of the dead. When enjoying the ritual, people use mulberry leaves to line the table, with kudzu seedlings, hemp seedlings, corn seedlings made of hemp grain are tied to the foot of the table, meaning that the harvest to honor the ancestors. The day before the Mid-Yuan Festival, people in the square in front of the temple erected a few feet high bamboo poles, the top of the tie a lantern, called the "Lantern Penny", this is the public nature of the festival. Folk legend has it that after the lanterns on the Penny are lit, the lonely ghosts scattered all over the place who have not been worshipped will know that there will be food to be enjoyed here tomorrow, so they will meet each other here to have a full meal. On the day of the Mid-Yuan Festival, the meat market is closed for one day, and most of the people are vegetarian and fasting. At dawn the next day, vendors go from house to house selling millet rice, marking the completion of the festival's offerings.
Liang Kejia, who served as prime minister during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty, recounted in his book "Chunxi Sanshan Zhi" some of the customs of the festival in his native Fujian province. In the Northern Song Dynasty, people like to play in the Shenguang Temple on the day of the Mid-Yuan Festival, the temple is as lively as a marketplace, the then governor Wang Kui also made a "Mid-Yuan Yan Baizhang Xiaolou" poem to record its pomp and circumstance: "Xue Lao Peak south more near the west, the small building on the highway and cloud Qi. The Zhongshan wine was ripe for the Mid-Yuan Festival, and I went back to him drunk as mud." In the Southern Song Dynasty, people felt that this move is not meaningful, so the custom was abolished.
Ming Dynasty, the Fujian region of the festival is still very grand, every family should be prepared for the paper money, write the name of the ancestors, and then burned to worship. If a married woman to worship the deceased parents, but also in the paper clothes, paper money above the cage on the muslin burning, to show the difference, called "yarn box". In the Putian area, people in the early morning of July 15, the offerings will be well prepared, and then the whole family dressed up, go out to the air as a bow to make way, meaning that the spirits of the ancestors into the home. After the sacrifice, the family sends the spirits out of the house respectfully. In the evening, people prepare fasting rice, wontons, and paper money, and ask the shamans to set off fireworks in the marketplace and give food to the wild spirits that have no one to sacrifice to. Because of the high cost, some poor families who are not able to make ends meet sometimes have to postpone this annual ritual until August or September.
In contrast, in Beijing during the same period, the festival was much simpler. The Ming Dynasty Shen Bang's "Wan Department Miscellany", Beijing suburbs of Wanping County, the townspeople in the July 15 day to take kudzu corn seedlings, hemp seedlings, corn seedlings, with the roots with the land vertical bound on both sides of the door, and then bound three clumps standing outside the door, offerings to the noodles and fruits, known as the "sacrifice of hemp Valley". Hangzhou and other places in the family, the Mid-Yuan Festival to invite monks and nuns chanting sutras, recommending the souls of the dead. At night, along the river, with the water to put with gabions and paper paste, placed in the lotus leaves or wooden boards on the lamp, inside the candles and incense, in order to guide the drowning ghosts, known as the "River Lanterns". These customs, in the Ming Dynasty novel "the first carve shoot surprise" are reflected: "and at the time of the July half of the Yu Lan will be Lent. Hangzhou yearly routine, people do kung fu, point to put the river lamp."
The Mid-Yuan Festival in the Qing Dynasty was also very lively, not only burning paper money, incense and candles to sacrifice, fireworks, people will gather together to twist rice-planting songs, lion dance. The Fujian area is popular in a game called "climb the lonely shed". The game originated in the year of famine, the rich people relief, in the altar next to build a food shed, so that the hungry people free to climb on the roof of the shed to fight for food. It later evolved into a folk game for the Mid-Yuan Festival. During the game, four long poles more than ten meters high were erected, with grease smeared all over the poles, and the players were divided into four teams, with the one who climbed to the top of the pole first as the winner. Some towns in Taiwan still retain this custom.