While researching mid-autumn festival traditions in the Qin Dynasty, I found that many of the familiar customs we associate with the festival today developed in much later dynasties. That discovery led me to an older Wuyi Mountain legend, set against the historical world of the Qin Dynasty. Recorded in the Wuyi Mountain Record, written by the Song-dynasty scholar Zhu Mu, the tale tells of a mysterious mid-autumn gathering at Wuyi Mountain, a rainbow bridge, hundreds of pavilions, music, and a magical feast. It inspired me to imagine what such a mid-autumn night might have felt like more than two thousand years ago.

🏮 Tonight, we step quietly back more than two thousand years, into the Qin Dynasty, when China's first emperor had only recently brought the Warring States under one rule. It is one year after the unification, and the new empire ...