The Origins of the Mid-Autumn Festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, holds deep cultural significance in Chinese tradition. Known poetically as the “Moon Festival,” its origins trace back to ancient agricultural societies that revered lunar cycles. The philosophy behind the festival reflects a profound observation of nature: “When water fills, it overflows; when the moon waxes full, it wanes; when flowers bloom completely, they fade.” This cyclical worldview shaped the festival’s timing—a rare moment when the moon appears perfectly round, symbolizing harmony and completion.
In the Qing court, the celebration followed elaborate protocols. Female officials led moon-worshiping ceremonies as the full moon rose, while the entire palace—from the Empress Dowager Cixi to ministers and eunuchs—exchanged gifts, mirroring customs of the Dragon Boat Festival. The festivities culminated in theatrical performances depicting the legend of Chang’e, the moon goddess, and her jade rabbit—a tale blending romance, celestial intrigue, and moral lessons about ambition and contentment.
A Theatrical Performance with Real-Life Drama
The palace’s moon festival play unfolded a fantastical narrative: Chang’e’s jade rabbit, lonely in the lunar palace, transforms into a beautiful maiden on earth. A golden rooster from the sun, equally smitten, descends as a handsome prince. Their idyllic romance is complicated by a red rabbit’s clumsy attempts at courtship—its imperfect human transformation leaving telltale crimson features. When celestial forces intervene to return the jade rabbit to the moon, the golden rooster retreats heartbroken to the sun.
This performance took an unexpected turn when the powerful eunuch Li Lianying escorted an unfamiliar young man directly before the Empress Dowager—an unusual breach of protocol that set court whispers aflame. The stranger, later revealed as the son of a deceased Manchu noble, became the center of a marriage plot that would test the loyalties of a young lady-in-waiting.
Marriage Politics in the Imperial Court
The Empress Dowager’s matchmaking attempts reveal much about late Qing court dynamics. When she proposed marrying her Western-educated attendant to the noble’s son, it demonstrated how imperial favor could become a gilded cage. The attendant’s tearful protest—citing filial duty to her ailing father and devotion to Cixi—reflects the tension between personal agency and imperial will.
Cixi’s response exposes her pragmatic worldview: “Not everything in this world needs to be beautiful.” Her initial persistence, followed by surprising acquiescence when the match dissolved (the noble’s son married a princess’s daughter instead), shows the complex interplay of power and personal relationships in the Forbidden City. The episode also highlights how Western-educated courtiers occupied an ambivalent position—valued for their skills yet distrusted for their foreign influences.
The August 26th Memorial Day
Another significant observance was the August 26th memorial commemorating the hardships of Emperor Shunzhi during the Qing dynasty’s establishment. Facing starvation during military campaigns, Shunzhi and his troops survived on tree leaves—a moment of adversity transformed into an annual ritual of remembrance.
The palace observed this day with austere authenticity: meatless meals of vegetable-wrapped rice eaten without utensils, symbolizing their ancestors’ desperation. This ritual, maintained into Cixi’s era, served as both historical memorial and political theater—reinforcing Manchu identity and the dynasty’s hard-won legitimacy.
The Empress Dowager’s Daily Rituals
Autumn also brought more intimate court routines. Cixi personally supervised the harvesting and preservation of gourds from the imperial gardens—selecting specimens with the narrowest “waists” that reminded her humorously of Western corsets. The painstaking process (peeling, drying, and polishing) produced thousands of decorative gourds stored in a dedicated palace hall.
A revealing incident occurred when a lady-in-waiting accidentally broke the stem of Cixi’s favorite gourd. While others advised concealment, the attendant’s honest confession elicited unexpected mercy: “A ripe melon falls by itself”—showing Cixi’s capacity for leniency toward favored subordinates. This minor drama exposed underlying tensions among the ladies-in-waiting, with the Empress intervening to check their jealousy.
The Russian Circus Incident
A remarkable cultural collision occurred when a visiting Russian circus performed in the Summer Palace—the first such event in Qing court history. Cixi’s fascination with aerialists and elephant acts clashed with conservative officials’ protests, prompting her famous outburst: “You see how little power I truly have—I cannot even watch a circus without criticism!”
Her initial enthusiasm (especially for a girl dancing on balloons and acrobats on swings) gave way to characteristic capriciousness. Within days, she dismissed the spectacle as unremarkable—a pattern reflecting her mercurial engagement with foreign novelties. The incident also reveals her careful image management, instructing attendants to shield the foreign painter from witnessing corporal punishments that might feed perceptions of Qing “barbarity.”
Preparations for Winter and the Imperial Birthday
As autumn deepened, the court turned to sartorial preparations for winter and Cixi’s upcoming birthday celebrations. The Empress Dowager’s lavish gifts of ermine-lined robes with sable trims and pearl-encrusted hats weren’t mere finery—they were calculated political gestures. Her explanation to the recipient—”Many princesses aren’t blood relatives; we grant titles for exceptional service”—laid bare the mechanics of imperial patronage.
These gifts sparked visible resentment among longer-serving ladies-in-waiting, prompting the Empress to intervene. Such tensions illustrate how Cixi deliberately balanced factions within her court, using material rewards as tools of governance.
Reflections on Cultural Exchange
The narrative repeatedly returns to the foreign painter Katherine Carl’s portrait work—a source of both fascination and skepticism for Cixi. Her critiques (“Why must she paint from life? Chinese artists need only glance”) reveal aesthetic tensions between representational Western art and traditional Chinese methods. More significantly, Cixi’s paranoia about the painter learning Chinese (“The less she knows, the better”) epitomizes the Qing court’s ambivalent engagement with the outside world—simultaneously curious and deeply wary.
These autumn episodes collectively paint a vivid portrait of the late Qing court—a world where celestial mythology intertwined with political intrigue, where foreign novelties sparked both delight and distrust, and where the Empress Dowager’s mercurial will shaped every aspect of daily life. The preserved details—from broken gourds to circus balloons—offer rare intimacy with a fading imperial world on the brink of transformation.