On the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar, Chinese people celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival — a special day for family reunions and the remembrance of relatives who are traveling or living far away. On this day, the full moon becomes the symbol of perfection and unity. In the rural village of Huang Cun, where the Chinese house Yin Yu Tang was originally built, these annual family gatherings were especially precious to local people because of the distinct history of the region. Stories from local families, like the Huang family of Yin Yu Tang, are full of both happiness and sorrow about being separated from or reunited with their loved ones. The nights of the Mid-Autumn Festival were especially significant to them.

Around 1800, when Yin Yu Tang’s construction was completed, the Huizhou Prefecture in southeast China was known for its “Hui merchants” who did business all over the country. Yin Yu Tang was located in Xiuning County, one of the six counties of this prefecture. In this region, about half the size of Massachusetts, the mountainous terrain meant that local people could not make a living nor feed their families through farming alone. Huizhou-born Hu Shih (1891-1962), one of the most significant Chinese scholars of the 20th century, recalled in his autobiography that the agricultural yield in this region for a whole year could only support the local population for three months.

The geographical characteristics of Huizhou drove local people to mercantile careers. Many boys left home in their early teens to work as apprentices in the businesses of relatives or friends. While the men from Huizhou traveled or worked in other cities, women, children and elders lived in the family home. A local saying characterizes the bitterness of such constant separation: “Being husband and wife for a whole life is just three and half years.”

The difficulty of leaving home for work, especially for young teenagers, and the worry felt by the family at home fill the Huang family’s letters. In the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1912, Huang Zizhi (1883-1934) was struck down by malaria and did not return home. Working in Raozhou, Jiangxi Province (140 miles from his hometown), he received medicine mailed by his mother Madam Cheng (1858-1915) and his brother Zixian (c. 1878-1929). In the same enclosed letter, after asking about Zizhi’s health, Zixian included some medicinal recipes. Twenty years later, when Zizhi’s son Zhenxin was working in a charcoal shop in Shanghai at the age of 16, he sent a letter to his mother for her birthday: “Because I, your son, am [currently] a traveler dwelling in a distant land, I could not express my wishes in person with the others.” In the postscript, he also asked her to send him more shoes. The emotional bond between family members was reinforced by these letters sent across mountains and passed from one generation to another.