--- title: "The Party That Banned China’s Festivals Now Claims to Own Them" description: "Xi Jinping puts the mid-autumn festival to work for the state, but old customs answer to older loyalties" author: "Arthur Wren" published: 2026-09-28T17:09:41Z modified: 2026-09-29T06:30:22Z url: https://rews.cc/a/the-party-that-banned-china-s-festivals-now-claims-to-own-th-874208 language: en tags: ["china", "politics", "xi-jinping", "tradition", "world"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # The Party That Banned China’s Festivals Now Claims to Own Them *Xi Jinping puts the mid-autumn festival to work for the state, but old customs answer to older loyalties* By Arthur Wren · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-party-that-banned-china-s-festivals-now-claims-to-own-th-874208 ## In brief - The mid-autumn festival fell on September 25th this year; it has been a public holiday only since 2008 - The lunar new year was cancelled in the Cultural Revolution, restored in 1980; other festivals were revived from 2005 - Xi Jinping casts the festivals as expressions of cultural confidence guaranteed by the Communist Party - Temples need state approval to expand and must display the national flag - Activists say some Muslim Uyghurs have been pressed to drink alcohol and eat pork to show holiday spirit Glamping is not usually a political act. It takes no courage to drive to a designer campsite where the white tents are already pitched and the tables are laden. Yet in China this autumn, choosing to go camping under the full moon carries a political weight, of an agreeable kind: it is proof that festivals once scorned by the government and neglected by many have been restored, with a modern shine, to the centre of the Chinese year. This year the mid-autumn festival fell on September 25th, making a three-day weekend. It has been a public holiday only since 2008, and until recently most people marked it no further than by eating mooncakes — dry pastries loved by some, loathed by others. In Zhangzhou, in the southern province of Fujian, The Economist’s Chaguan columnist found the old town hung with moon-themed decorations; an hour away, at the edge of the Taiwan Strait, Double Fish Island offered open-air dinner for two at its luxury campsite for 298 yuan ($44), all the better to admire the moon, the festival’s focal point. The turnabout is worth pausing on. In the early 20th century, reformers railed against the lunar calendar and its festivals as the opposite of modernity; in 1912 the republican government adopted the Gregorian calendar, and the Communists went further, branding many festivals feudal superstitions. The lunar new year was cancelled outright during the Cultural Revolution. Then the wheel turned: the holiday was restored in 1980, and in 2005 the party issued a document calling for the revival of the mid-autumn festival, tomb-sweeping day and the dragon-boat festival, [whose founding legend](https://rews.cc/a/a-2-200-year-old-packed-lunch-that-no-one-was-ever-meant-to--2a0a28) reaches back more than two thousand years. Under Xi Jinping, the festivals have been given heavier work. He calls them expressions of Chinese cultural confidence, and by extension casts the party as the guarantor of what it means to be Chinese. Around the mid-autumn festival, propaganda returns to the theme of living “under the same moon” — one moon over China’s ethnic groups, across the Taiwan Strait, over the common weal of humanity. State media use the holidays to amplify an idea Mr Xi likes: that nation and family are interwoven. The revival is not only decreed from above. Observance is patchy — in many cities people simply enjoy the day off — but in the south, and especially in Fujian, where temples and clan halls survived the Maoist years better than elsewhere, the festivals still set the rhythm of life. The joys and headaches of family reunion matter more to many than the abstraction of national unification. “The younger generation, people born after 1990, are mostly away for their studies or work. It’s only at festivals like this that they come back,” said a Ms Chen, standing near a shrine to Confucius in central Zhangzhou. This year her son could not get home from Guangzhou; the trains were sold out for the long weekend. The common criticism is that the revival is skin-deep. The festival’s joking nickname is “mooncake festival,” since eating mooncakes was once the whole of it — and gift boxes of them served as a handy way to bribe officials. But the calendar of events around it has grown thick, in no small part because cities compete for tourists. Zhangzhou stages folk characters on stilts; in Xi’an actors walk the streets challenging visitors to poetry duels about the moon; the water town of Wuzhen sets up altars where people leave food for Chang’e, the moon goddess, whose companion, the Jade Rabbit, can be spotted on the lunar face if you squint just right. ## Whose festival is it? The deeper people dig into these traditions, the more a tension may emerge — between the culture the state prescribes and the way people actually want to live. Temples dot Zhangzhou, but expanding one requires approval from the religious-affairs authorities, a burdensome process. Teachings must follow state-controlled interpretations. Religious sites must display the national flag. One Zhangzhou temple carries large signboards in its main courtyard extolling Mr Xi’s accomplishments in protecting traditional culture. There are other risks. Most of these festivals are bound up with ethnic-Han culture, and championing them can alienate minorities. The lunar new year is not a traditional festival among the mostly Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang, yet activists say some Uyghurs have been pressured to drink alcohol and eat pork dumplings to show holiday spirit. The party also openly frets about villagers turning to temples and ancestral shrines as dispensers of temporal authority. A Confucian mentor whom Chaguan recently met put the quiet counter-claim plainly: the ruler does not have carte blanche, for the people’s deference depends on his governing with benevolence. Asked whether China’s present leaders do so, he pursed his lips and declined to answer. The party has made itself the guardian of traditions it once belittled and tried to crush. In doing so it has summoned forces with roots far deeper than its own — traditions that kept themselves alive in clan halls and kitchens through the worst years, and that may in the end hold a greater claim on the loyalty of the people than the institution that now claims to own them. The moon was full this year long before anyone thought to put it in a slogan.