At Mid-Autumn in the Taiwan region of China, the Star Isn't the Mooncake but the Grill
Mid-Autumn 2026 falls on 25 September (the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month). On this day last year, my friend in Taipei sent me a video: at ten at night, in the gap of the arcade under her building, three households had each set up a small grill, the smoke drifting upward, and someone shouting "is it done yet". Far off toward the riverside park there was another patch of red glow.
Under the same moon, on our table sit mooncakes and pomelos; on tables in the Taiwan region of China there is often a barbecue grill. Many people assume this is an ancient rite. It is not — it is a very young thing.
It Began as the "Side Dish to Moon-Viewing", Then Took the Star Role
Leafing through old newspapers from the Taiwan region of China, one finds a clear timeline:
- 1973: the Economic Daily News recorded an open-air moon-viewing gathering at Mengmenggu, where "eating barbecue and a campfire party for moon-viewing" were the main activities.
- 1981: the Min Sheng Daily reported that the Mingde Amusement Park set off fireworks on Mid-Autumn night and opened camping and barbecue facilities for visitors.
- After 1982: a Min Sheng Daily report headlined "Barbecue Moon-Viewing Is 'In' This Year" wrote: "Barbecue has become fashionable for moon-viewing this Mid-Autumn in the Hsinchu area; not only are fires blazing everywhere in the scenic spots, some people who do not go out also light a grill at the front door or on the balcony." The same piece gave the reason — the export market for grills was in a slump; manufacturers shifted heavily to domestic sales, and Hsinchu happened to be the base of grill manufacturing.
In other words, by the early 1980s it was already there, but not widespread. What actually pushed it into a mass movement was the advertising and the retail channels that followed:
| Time | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1986 | Wanjiaxiang soy sauce launched a television advertisement, and its line "one family barbecues, ten thousand families smell the aroma" stayed famous for more than twenty years |
| Late 1980s | Kimlan barbecue sauce ran heavy advertising with a catchy melody (Business Weekly dates it to 1989; another account puts it a year apart from the Wanjiaxiang advertisement) |
| The same period | Mass retailers such as Makro and Carrefour brought out barbecue product sets for the season |
| 1989 | The Economic Daily News reported barbecue equipment selling fast: one manufacturer said that "in the space of a single Mid-Autumn Festival we can sell 120,000 sets of simple barbecue equipment" |
There is one more layer of explanation that is often overlooked: after the 1980s, with urbanisation and industrialisation, many people left their hometowns to work, and Mid-Autumn became a rare moment when everyone could be gathered together — and barbecue, which you can eat standing up and chat over while it cooks, fitted that exactly.
And What About the Rite Half of It?
The ritual half has always been there: moon worship, offerings, reunion cakes, pomelos — that set of rules has its own finer points. It is just that the part of this festival people actually remember is often the half that the ritual manuals never wrote down: the smoke at the mouth of the alley, the neighbours calling out to each other "is it done yet".
Picking a Day and Drawing a Lot Are the Same Kind of Question
The first concrete question Mid-Autumn raises is "which day to hold it, what time to start" — with a house full of people, times are hard to line up. That kind of question is set out fairly clearly in Huangli Date Selection: Where the Suitable and Avoid Lines Come From: which system the "suitable" and "avoid" lines are derived from, and how far they can be applied.
The second kind of question is "will this year go smoothly". Around every Mid-Autumn the number of people drawing a lot goes up; the lot poems are graded into upper, middle and lower, each read in its own way. San Shan Guo Wang Ling Qian: How to Draw and Read a Lot goes through the procedure and the grades. What it gives you is a direction for thought, not a promise.
At the end of that video last year, my friend turned the camera back to the table — the mooncakes were still sitting untouched in their box. She said: "If you're here next year, I'll save you an ear of corn." And if you also have something you want to get clear, on 占卜迷指 it works like this: you describe your trouble in natural language, the system recommends a suitable method, casts the chart and gives a reading, and you can export it to keep and compare against slowly.
Information current as of 23 September 2026 (China Standard Time).
Sources
- Business Weekly: the "one family barbecues, ten thousand families smell the aroma" advertisement and the force behind Mid-Autumn barbecue — includes the 1989 Economic Daily News quotation on barbecue equipment selling well, the post-1982 Min Sheng Daily report and the mass retailers' seasonal campaigns
- Roomie: is the origin of the Mid-Autumn barbecue wave really "one family barbecues, ten thousand families smell the aroma"? — a secondary write-up (the piece notes at its foot that the first draft was compiled by AI), used to cross-check the 1973 Economic Daily News and 1981 Min Sheng Daily items, for corroboration only
- National Cultural Memory Bank online curation platform: "one family barbecues, ten thousand families smell the aroma"
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