DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷八
中秋
The wine runs out.
Mid-Autumn as a sales cycle: new wine and decorated storefronts, houses that drink their stock dry by the afternoon, new crab and fruit, then a moon night of tavern rooftops, distant pipes and an all-night market.
READ THE NIGHT ↓1. The wine goes on sale, runs out, and the moon rises.
中秋節前，諸店皆賣新酒，重新結絡門面綵樓，花頭畫竿，醉仙錦旆。市人爭飲，至午、未間，家家無酒，拽下望子。是時，螯蟹新出，石榴、榅勃、梨、棗、栗、孛萄、弄色橙橘，皆新上市。中秋夜，貴家結飾臺榭，民間爭占酒樓玩月，絲篁鼎沸。近內庭居民，夜深遙聞笙竽之聲，宛若雲外。閭里兒童，連宵嬉戲，夜市駢闐，至於通曉。
Before the Mid-Autumn festival all the shops sell new wine and redo the colored-silk towers and bands at their frontages, with flower-tipped painted poles and “Drunken Immortal” brocade pennants. The townspeople vie to drink, until between noon and mid-afternoon every house is out of wine and takes down its sign. At this time crab with claws has newly come out, and pomegranates, wenbo quince, pears, jujubes, chestnuts, grapes and oranges and tangerines just turning color have all newly come to market. On the night of Mid-Autumn, noble households deck out their terraces and pavilions, and ordinary people vie to occupy tavern upper rooms to watch the moon, with strings and pipes boiling like a cauldron. Residents near the inner palace, late in the night, hear from afar the sound of reed organs and pipes, as if from beyond the clouds. The children of the lanes play on through the night, and the night market is packed until daybreak.
The first half compresses a whole sales cycle into a day. New wine is made ready, the frontage is decorated as advertising, the drinkers empty the stock between noon and mid-afternoon, and the taverns end the day by pulling their signs down; the sign acts as both advertisement and inventory signal. The fruit list is a seasonal calendar with crab at its head, each item marked simply as new. Then the night. Two audiences watch the same moon from different places, nobles on their own terraces and ordinary people in a scramble for tavern rooms, so that the tavern is the commoners’ viewing platform. Music boils up in the taverns, and the residents near the inner palace hear pipes faintly, “as if from beyond the clouds”; the text does not say where that music comes from. The children and the night market have no closing hour.
Three places where the text bends.
The Siku scan writes 棖 where the sense and the reference edition call for 橙. The page reads 弄色橙橘, “oranges and tangerines just turning color.”
The Siku scan and the reference edition both write 孛萄, a variant spelling of 葡萄, and 榅勃, a variant of 榅桲 (quince). The page keeps the forms as written and translates them.
The 望子 is a hanging sign, the tavern’s advertisement; taking it down means the house has no more to sell. The text does not explain the custom, so the page keeps this inference to a gloss.
The new season’s wine, on sale before the festival and drunk out by afternoon.
A brocade banner hung on a tavern’s frontage, named alongside the flower-tipped painted pole.
The hanging sign of a drinking house; the text says every house takes it down when the wine is gone.
Literally “clawed crab”; the first fruit-of-the-season item in the list.
The Mid-Autumn custom of enjoying the moon, here done on terraces and in tavern rooms.
A market that runs through the night; the text says it is packed and lasts until dawn.
Entry 69 turns the festival into logistics: stock, decoration, the moment the signs come down, and then a night with no closing hour. The moon itself is never described. The last entry of the volume turns to the ninth month and to the hill, the chrysanthemum and the cake.
家家無酒，拽下望子。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 棖 is read as 橙 after the reference edition.