| 01 September 2002
Chinese get-together for the autumn moon festival
 Chinese dragon at CV One's Lifestyle event 2002 in Coventry City Centre
|  | The moon festival is the second most important festival in the traditional Chinese calendar, the first being New Year.
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 | | The mid-autumn moon festival (Zhong Qiu) is held in autumn as this is when the moon is at its brightest, which is how the festival has come to have two names. In 2002, the date for the festival is 21 September.
| Μύ |  | Inside Coventry's Chinese Herbal Medicine shop
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To mark the festival, families get together for a meal which includes sweet wine and moon cakes. The family may also spend some of the evening watching the moon and listening to poems and stories about the moon.
ΜύThe importance of the moon
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| Μύ |  | Coventry's biggest Chinese restaurant, the Dragon Phoenix
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The moon symbolises family reunions in Chinese culture and there are many lunar legends.
Some of these Chinese legends talk about the goddess and hare who live in the moon, transported there as a punishment for tyranny.
Μύ| Μύ |  | Coventry's Chinese Herbal Medicine shop
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Moon cakes are specially made for the mid-autumn festival. They are a traditional dish that dates back over 400 years. During the Ming dynasty is was customary to exchange moon cakes as greetings at family reunions.
The ingredients in moon cakes vary slightly throughout China, but often they are similar to shortbread with several layers of bean paste and spiced pork or vegetables. Some can be very sweet, including coconut paste, fruits and nuts.
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