For many people, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a familiar part of the year. On this day, people gather with their families, admire the Moon, and send their best wishes to those who are far away. Over the centuries, the Moon, family reunion, homeland, and longing for distant loved ones have gradually become some of the most enduring associations with the festival.
Yet before it became a festival, the Mid-Autumn tradition was, in many ways, an act of looking up at the Moon. Long before humanity possessed modern calendars or astronomical knowledge, the Sun, Moon, stars, and seasonal cycles were closely connected to everyday life.
When should crops be planted? When should they be harvested? When would the cold season begin?
The sky was one of the most important ways ancient people understood the passage of time and the rhythms of nature. The Moon was particularly distinctive. Its appearance changed continuously, waxing and waning in a regular cycle. Sometimes it appeared as a brilliant full disk, while at other times only a narrow crescent remained. These recurring changes encouraged people to observe the Moon and gradually assign meaning to its cycles.
One of the historical roots of the Mid-Autumn tradition can be traced to ancient practices of lunar worship. In ancient China, rituals dedicated to the Moon existed in different regions and periods, and the autumn equinox was also associated with lunar rites.
The Book of Rites (Liji) contains a particularly well-known passage: “In spring, the Son of Heaven worships the Sun; in autumn, he worships the Moon.” At this stage, the Moon was not yet the familiar symbol of reunion that it would later become. It was first and foremost part of the natural world, something that ancient people observed with both curiosity and reverence.
But when we extend our view beyond China, we find that people across different continents, civilizations, and historical periods have all looked toward the same Moon in the night sky. For early human societies, the Moon helped mark time and seasonal change. Agricultural communities observed its cycles alongside the rhythms of the year, and during the harvest season, the brightness of the full Moon was often associated with the abundance provided by the land.
Across Asia and beyond, the autumn full Moon has often been connected with seasonal transition, harvest, and communal celebration. In South Asia, Sharad Purnima is traditionally associated with a particularly clear full-moon night following the monsoon season, when people gather for prayers, music, dancing, and other festivities. In Southeast Asia, Tết Trung Thu, Vietnam's Mid-Autumn Festival, is closely associated with children, lantern processions, lion dances, and family celebrations. Different customs may surround these traditions, but the Moon above them is the same celestial body, witnessing the retreat of the rainy season, the maturation of crops, and the moment when people gather together at the end of another agricultural cycle.
In European and North American traditions, the autumn full Moon has likewise been closely associated with the harvest season. The Harvest Moon, traditionally referring to the full Moon nearest the autumnal equinox, is notable because the Moon rises relatively early on several successive evenings around this period. Before widespread artificial lighting, this additional evening light could extend the time available for agricultural work, and the Harvest Moon consequently became closely associated with the autumn harvest.
Among many Indigenous peoples of North America, full Moons and lunar months have also been given names associated with seasonal changes, local ecology, and patterns of subsistence. Names such as the Corn Moon and Hunting Moon reflect the relationship between lunar cycles, crop maturation, hunting seasons, and other changes in the natural environment. In this sense, the Moon was not simply an object in the sky. It also served as a way of keeping track of the land, the harvest, and the changing seasons.
And there comes a common thread: Whether people lived in the East or the West, and regardless of the differences in their languages, myths, and belief systems, the Moon often illuminated remarkably similar aspects of human life. It has illuminated fields and roads, the paths of travelers, and the lives of people waiting for a new season to arrive.
Today, we know what the Moon is. We know that it is Earth's natural satellite, we understand the mechanisms behind its phases, and we know that human beings have even walked upon its surface.
For people living in the distant past, however, the Moon was first and foremost an existence that could not yet be fully explained. It waxed and waned, disappeared and returned, repeating its cycle again and again like a clock suspended in the sky, reminding people that time was always moving forward.
Different civilizations therefore created their own stories around it. In Chinese mythology, people imagined Chang'e, the Jade Rabbit, and the osmanthus tree dwelling upon the Moon. In ancient Greece, the Moon was personified as Selene, who drove her chariot across the night sky. In ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerian moon god Nanna was worshipped, while the lunar cycle provided an important temporal framework for reckoning months, organizing records, and conducting rituals. In many Indigenous traditions of North America, the Moon likewise carries meanings associated with time, life, and the cycles of the seasons.
What is fascinating is that even after humanity began to understand the physical nature of the Moon, and eventually reached its surface, we never stopped telling stories about it.
The Moon continued to appear in poetry, literature, and cinema, carrying an increasingly diverse range of meanings. Li Bai wrote of looking up at the bright Moon and thinking of his homeland, while Su Shi used the Moon to express his hopes that people separated by distance might still share its beauty. Jules Verne transformed the Moon into a starting point for imagining humanity's journey into space, while the film Moon turned our nearest celestial neighbor into a setting through which questions of isolation, identity, and existence could be explored.
The Moon has therefore played many different roles in human stories. Sometimes it is the dwelling place of gods and mythical beings. Sometimes it represents homeland and remembrance. Sometimes it becomes a gateway into a world of fantasy. At other times, it becomes humanity's first gaze toward the universe beyond Earth.
Perhaps this is why the Moon occupies such a unique position in human culture. It is distant enough to inspire imagination, yet familiar enough to have accompanied humanity throughout its history.
In this sense, the Moon may have been humanity's earliest “faraway place.”
Long before we truly ventured into the stars, we had already spent thousands of years looking toward the Moon. And through countless stories, we had already arrived there again and again.
This is one of the most remarkable transitions in human history.
For most of our existence, the Moon was something we could only imagine. We placed it in myths, poems, and stories. Then we began to understand it. Eventually, we built spacecraft, left Earth, and actually reached the place that had once been visible only as a distant object in the night sky.
On Christmas Eve in 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit the Moon. During the mission, they also became the first humans to witness an Earthrise from lunar orbit, seeing Earth emerge above the lunar horizon as their spacecraft moved around the far side of the Moon. Astronaut William Anders captured the image that would become one of the most iconic photographs in the history of space exploration, showing our blue planet suspended against the darkness of space.
The photograph offered humanity an entirely new perspective on its home world. Earth was no longer simply the ground beneath our feet. Seen from the vicinity of another celestial body, it appeared as a small, isolated world surrounded by an immense darkness.
Then, in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface. From the Moon, Earth appeared much larger in the sky than the Moon does from Earth, with an angular diameter roughly four times greater. The blue planet hung above the lunar landscape, bright and distant at the same time.
In a sense, the beginning of the Space Age was also the beginning of humanity's long journey toward the distant places it had spent millennia imagining.
But what happens when we take this idea one step further?
What happens when humanity does not merely travel to the Moon, but actually leaves Earth and settles on other worlds?
Perhaps, one day, Earth itself will become a distant coordinate in the sky, much like the Moon appears to us today. Future generations may stand upon another planet and look toward that familiar blue world from afar.
What will they remember?
Perhaps it will not simply be a continent on a map or a particular city. They may remember the smell of wet air after rain, the sound of leaves moving in the wind, or the waves breaking along a coastline. They may remember the night skies they once saw as children, skies that seemed ordinary only because they were always there.
They may remember Earth's seasons: the damp smell of soil as spring thawed the ground, the long summer evenings when the setting Sun turned the sky orange, the golden fields of autumn moving beneath the wind, or the quiet of winter as snow covered the landscape and softened every sound.
And somewhere within those memories, there may still be a Moon.
Not because the Moon is mysterious, but because humanity spent such a long time living beneath it.
This is one of the questions that has increasingly fascinated us while designing Huntian: StarTrace.
If a group of people truly leaves its home planet and arrives on a distant world, they will of course bring technology, knowledge, language, and everything required to build new settlements and civilizations.
But what about the memories that cannot be placed inside a spacecraft?
After arriving on a new planet, they may have a new sky, a new Sun, new day-night cycles, and entirely new seasons. But will they sometimes remember what their original sky looked like? Will they miss the rain, the forests, the oceans, or the ordinary things that seemed so insignificant at the time, only to become irreplaceable after they were gone?
The Moon may be one of the easiest of these memories to recall.
It was there before humanity had cities. It was there when we began cultivating the land. It was there when we sailed across oceans, migrated across continents, and built civilizations. It was there when we turned our imagination into myths and poetry, and it was still there when humanity finally left Earth and ventured into space.
So when humanity travels far enough to leave Home, far enough that the familiar night sky can no longer be seen, what people miss may not simply be a natural satellite.
They may miss everything that once happened beneath it.
This is what Lexing represents in Huntian: StarTrace: a distant new world.
Lexing is fundamentally different from the Blue Planet. It has two stars, a massive ice giant, and a ring system stretching across the sky. For the first humans to arrive there, the sky is beautiful but unfamiliar. And unfamiliarity means that everything must be started again.
The land must be studied. Resources must be located. Habitats must be established. Roads must be built. And eventually, people must decide where a new home can exist.
In a sense, you are doing what the earliest explorers and settlers in human history once did, except that this time the unfamiliar territory is not another continent.
It is an entire planet.
Every pioneer experiences a similar transformation. At first, you see only wilderness. Then construction begins. And eventually, there comes a moment when you realize that you are no longer simply “here.”
You have begun to belong here.
This is also why we believe that harvest is such an appropriate image for Lexing.
Harvest represents the moment when human labor finally receives an answer from the land. A strange planet may work in much the same way. At first, there is nothing here that belongs to humanity. There are no human cities, no human roads, and no lights shining across the landscape.
But after countless hours of work, unfamiliar ground begins to support new life.
You grow food. You build homes. You establish settlements. You celebrate the fact that you have finally survived and taken root.
And eventually, you can say:
This is home.
This led us to another idea when designing the sky of Lexing.
We felt that the planet needed a special object in its sky, something that people would instinctively look toward.
And so we designed Haijiao Tianya, a dormant comet whose name evokes the farthest reaches of the world.
Originally, it was a massive threat.
Haijiao Tianya is a long-period dormant comet with a large bilobate structure and an overall length of approximately 30 kilometers. When it approaches Lexing, humanity is confronted not with something romantic, but with a potential planetary catastrophe.
If such a massive body were to collide with Lexing at extremely high velocity, the impact could generate global-scale seismic disturbances and enormous tsunamis, potentially reducing a newly established civilization to ruins.
Humanity therefore has to find a way to change its trajectory.
You must recover technologies left behind by an earlier era, modify propulsion systems, calculate orbital trajectories, make use of gravity assists, and attempt to capture the comet within a limited orbital window.
Eventually, Haijiao Tianya is not destroyed.
Its trajectory is altered, and it remains in orbit around Lexing.
A threat that might once have destroyed the new world therefore becomes part of its sky.
At this point, we suddenly realized that Haijiao Tianya has an interesting connection to humanity's long history of looking at the Moon.
Thousands of years ago, people could only observe the Moon. Later, we began creating stories about it, projecting our imagination, hopes, and memories into the sky.
And in the future, humanity may possess the ability to change the sky itself.
Haijiao Tianya was not originally Lexing's moon. But humanity changed its trajectory and, in doing so, gave it a new role in the history of this new world.
Perhaps this is one of the ideas we love most about Huntian: StarTrace.
The people of the future will not necessarily forget the past simply because they have traveled farther. They will still look toward the sky. They will still name unfamiliar celestial bodies. They will still write stories into the stars.
But there is one fundamental difference.
This time, humanity is not merely observing the sky.
Humanity has begun to participate in creating it.
Technology will change. Civilizations will change. The planets on which humans live may change. Even the sky itself may change.
But we do not believe that traveling farther necessarily means forgetting where we came from.
In fact, the opposite may be true.
Once a person truly leaves home, many of the things that once seemed ordinary can become increasingly vivid in memory.
Perhaps humanity will one day live across many different worlds. Perhaps our ways of life will become so different that even the meaning of the word “home” will have changed.
But on a particular day, people may still look toward the sky for a familiar point of reference.
For humanity, what survives a festival is often not a particular ritual or fixed form. What survives is the willingness to stop for a moment, to remember the people who matter, the places that matter, and the time we once shared.
When Haijiao Tianya slowly crosses the sky, perhaps you will remember the Blue Planet from long ago.
You may remember that there was once a real Moon there.
And beneath that Moon were forests, rivers, oceans, and seasons. People celebrated the harvest in autumn. People missed their families across great distances. People left their homes for the first time. And some simply stood beneath the night sky and watched the Moon rise.
None of these things disappear simply because humanity leaves Earth.
They become stories.
And stories may be one of the few things humanity can carry with it to the farthest reaches of space.
Huntian: StarTrace has not yet officially launched, so this Mid-Autumn Festival, we cannot yet invite you to truly step onto Lexing.
You cannot yet stand upon its surface and watch two stars rise above the horizon. You cannot yet see its ring system stretching across the night sky, nor wait for Haijiao Tianya to slowly pass overhead.
But during this festival dedicated to the Moon, we wanted to tell you about it first.
And we wanted to tell you why, after arriving on Lexing, we still need a “Moon.”
Perhaps this is what we most want to express.
As humanity ventures into the stars, we will undoubtedly encounter new worlds, new skies, new landscapes, and new unknowns. We will leave familiar places and begin again somewhere unfamiliar.
But leaving does not necessarily mean losing.
The past does not simply disappear. It becomes something we carry with us as we continue moving forward.
For ancient humanity, the Moon was a distant object in the sky. For farmers, it was once associated with the harvest season. For poets, it could represent home. For travelers, it could become a symbol of memory. And for humanity as a whole, it was one of the earliest distant places toward which we projected our imagination.
For future generations, perhaps when they finally stand upon another planet and look up at the “Moon” of a new world, they will remember all of these things.
They will remember harvest.
They will remember journeys.
They will remember the first departure.
They will remember the world they once lived in.
And they may remember why humanity has always been willing to travel farther.
Perhaps one day, when you finally arrive on Lexing and see Haijiao Tianya crossing the night sky, you will remember that long ago, on the Blue Planet, humanity also looked up again and again.
Some people looked at the Moon and waited for the harvest.
Some looked at it and thought of someone far away.
Some looked at it and imagined the universe.
Eventually, we left that world and ventured into the stars.
And after arriving in a new world, we found ourselves doing the same thing once again.
We looked up.
And continued to imagine what might lie farther beyond.
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival.
May we always remember the things that once illuminated our lives, no matter where we may be.
May every journey bring new discoveries and new harvests.
And when humanity truly reaches the distant reaches of the stars, may we still be able to find our own light in an unfamiliar sky.
The Moon may grow distant. Our homeland may eventually become nothing more than a coordinate on a star map.
But humanity's story will always travel with us.
The Moon is far away. The stars stretch beyond the horizon. And still, we look up.
Huntian: StarTrace · 2026 Mid-Autumn Festival