Farmers across China celebrate harvest festival

China's harvest festival for farmers is not a typical holiday where people put aside their work for recreation. Instead, it is part of a busy harvesting season which usually begins around the autumnal equinox and lasts about a month.

Chinese farmers did not have their own festival until last year when the state designated autumnal equinox as a special day to celebrate grain harvests annually.

Farmers in Nanxian County, Hunan Province celebrate the harvest festival. (Photo: Yi Lixin)

As the festival fell on Monday, many villages held folk activities to set off the festive atmosphere.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, extended greetings to farmers and people working in agriculture and rural areas Monday.

"With a solid foundation laid by agriculture, we have full confidence in development," Xi said, calling on the public to pay more attention to agriculture, care for the countryside and farmers, and contribute to poverty alleviation, reform and development in agriculture and the countryside as well as the realization of rural vitalization.

Farmers in Shangcheng County, Henan Province celebrate the harvest festival. (Photo: Yang Xuwei/Publicity Office of Shangcheng County, Henan Province)

For decades, affairs relating to agriculture, rural development and farmers have been on the top agenda of the Chinese government, as it has never been easy to feed a population as large as China's.

Since New China was founded in 1949, China's population ballooned from 540 million to nearly 1.4 billion. Meanwhile, its per capita grain possession jumped from 209 kg to 470 kg, a level much higher than the world's average. (with input from Xinhua)