DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷八
秋社
Daughters go home.
The autumn altar day as an exchange of cake and wine, a dish of sliced meats on rice, married women sent home to their mothers’ families, and a schoolteacher’s club that hires singers and sends the pupils home with cakes.
READ THE ENTRY ↓1. Cake, wine and social rice.
八月，秋社，各以社糕、社酒相齎送。貴戚、宮院，以豬羊肉、腰子、奶房、肚肺、鴨餅、瓜薑之屬，切作棋子片樣，滋味調和，鋪於飯上，謂之「社飯」，請客供養。
In the eighth month, at the autumn she festival, people send one another gifts of social cake and social wine. The noble relatives and the palace compounds take pork and mutton, kidneys, udder, tripe and lungs, duck pastries, melon and ginger and the like, slice them into pieces the shape of chess pieces, season them well and spread them over rice, calling it “social rice,” to entertain guests and make offerings.
The festival is defined by what is exchanged. Two named gifts, cake and wine, move between households; then the text turns to a recipe, with a list of offal, meats, duck pastry, melon and ginger sliced into small chips and laid over rice. The recipe is given to the great households, not the common ones. The text names no altar and no god, though the word 社 itself points to the earth altar; the day is a meal.
2. Daughters, the teacher and the other three days.
人家婦女皆歸外家。晚歸，即外公、姨、舅皆以新葫蘆兒、棗兒為遺，俗云「宜良外甥」。市學先生預斂諸生錢，作社會，以致雇倩祗應、白席、歌唱之人。歸時各攜花籃、果實、食物、社糕而散。春社、重午、重九，亦是如此。
The women of the households all go back to their own families. When they return in the evening, their maternal grandfather, aunts and uncles all give them new little gourds and jujubes, a custom said to be “good for fine nephews.” The town-school teachers collect money from their pupils in advance to hold a social gathering, so as to hire attendants, banquet masters and singers. When they leave, each carries home a flower basket, fruit, food and social cake, and they disperse. The Spring Social, the Double Fifth and the Double Ninth are done in the same way.
Two circuits of exchange follow the household meal. In the first, married women go to their natal families and come back at evening with gourds and jujubes given by the grandfather and by aunts and uncles; the text’s proverb about nephews is the only explanation offered. In the second, a teacher passes the hat among his pupils and hires professional help (attendants, banquet masters and singers), so that a schoolroom pays for an occasion. The final sentence extends the entry to three other dates, the Spring Social, Duanwu and the Double Ninth, as if the whole could serve as a template; Meng does not say which parts are common to them.
Three places where the text is open.
The Siku text gives the saying in this form, as does the reference edition. The page renders it literally, “good for fine nephews,” and does not claim to know the wordplay behind it.
The Siku scan has 妳房; the reference edition reads 奶房, “udder.” The page standardizes to 奶房, and likewise reads the rare 瓜 variant in 瓜薑 as 瓜, “melon and ginger.”
The reference edition separates three kinds of hired people: attendants, banquet masters and singers. The page follows it, since 白席 is a recognized role of its own; the Siku text has no breaks.
The earth altar and its seasonal festivals; the entry names neither altar nor god and describes only gifts and meals.
Sliced meats, offal, duck pastry, melon and ginger over rice; the only dish the entry names.
The household of a married woman’s own family, where the daughters go for the day.
The teacher who collects money from his pupils to hold the gathering.
Literally “white mat”; a hired functionary at banquets, here listed among the hired help.
The fifth of the fifth month and the ninth of the ninth month, named at the end as festivals run in the same way.
Entry 68 gives almost no ritual and almost all circulation: cakes, wine, a dish for guests, a daughter’s day at home and a teacher’s hired singers. The closing clause extends it to three other dates, one of which, the Double Ninth, the volume has yet to reach. The next entry is the Mid-Autumn night.
春社、重午、重九，亦是如此。The sequence is Meng’s. The punctuation is editorial.
The primary text is read from the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111, 卷八); punctuation and the standardization of Siku variant glyphs are editorial. The Siku 妳房 is standardized to 奶房.