SF Autumn Moon Festival (thru Aug 28)

Join the Chinatown Merchants Association as the bustling streets of San Francisco's Chinatown are transformed into a vibrant public celebration for the 2022 Autumn Moon Festival on Saturday August 27 and Sunday August 28, 2022, from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. Over the course of two days, historic Chinatown on Grant Avenue, between California and Broadway, will be filled with arts and crafts vendors, food vendors, live music, local contemporary entertainment, mooncakes, lion dancing, and more family-friendly fun.

For those interested in Chinese genealogy, ancestral veneration and rituals, Saturday Aug 27th will be a rare opportunity to see a traditional Daoist blessing ceremony for the community and sacrificial veneration to the Yellow Emperor 黃帝 and to the Flame Emperor YanDi 炎帝. It is believed that 92% of Chinese living today are descendants of these two emperors (you can look up which line you are descended from if you attend on Saturday). Chinese cultural advisor David Lei will be explaining these rituals starting 11:30 am Saturday at 1151 Grant Avenue (near Broadway). All descendants of Huang and Yan are welcome to participate in the ceremony (commemorate and venerate your ancestors with fellow descendants).

Starting at 7:00 pm Saturday evening, you can participate in putting incense onto the Fire Dragon. A Fire Dragon dance is traditionally performed at the time of the Mid Autumn Festival to ward off plagues, so this ceremony is being reenacted as a hope to recover from Covid. The performance of the Fire Dragon will begin when it gets dark. David Lei will give a talk about the Fire Dragon at 1:15 pm Saturday at 1151 Grant Avenue where the dragon will be displayed.

These ceremonies/rituals are not religious. Confucians consider these to be "Li" which brings harmony to society. "Li" has many layers of meanings:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(Confucianism)

For more festival information: https://www.moonfestival.org