Mid-Autumn Festival: Lanterns, Mahjong, and Mooncakes!
The different flavors of mooncakes: green bean, green tea, pumpkin, and red bean. Photo by Autumn Bestgen
Zhōng qiū kuài lè! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, the Chinese Language Learners Club put on an event to celebrate the Chinese cultural event of Mid-Autumn. They hosted this event in order to have fun with students and teach them about the culture.
The story goes that Hou Yi the archer got an immortality elixir from the Gods. While he was gone, his wife Chang’e drank it to protect the drink, but she ended up floating up to the moon and was living on it as the moon Goddess. Hou Yi would then place mooncakes, fruits and other offerings under the moonlight for her. This started the mooncake festival called The Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the fall harvest and the moon as a time to gather with family and friends. Celebrators hang lanterns all around to lighten up the night sky to signify the path to good fortune, prosperity and especially unity. The Chinese Language Learners Club wanted to bring that to life at UMD.
On Monday, Oct. 7 they had a Mid-Autumn Celebration where they made origami lanterns, played mahjong, watched a movie and had mooncakes and tea. Mooncakes are a Chinese traditional dessert made especially for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The president of the club Jocelyn Wittenburg and events coordinator Grace Maki decided to have this big event because they wanted to share a fun tradition with the school community as well as inform the students about the club.
“Our goal is to spread awareness about Chinese culture and the language because it isn’t talked about as much,” Wittenberg said.
Students were quite interested in what the club was all about. They also wanted to learn about Chinese culture and language.
“I came for fun, I am trying something new,” said Zihang Ding. “I know this event and wanted to see how many students would come to this event, and to see how this event was going.”
The students all agreed that their favorite parts of the event were the mooncakes, as they are a delicious Chinese dessert. The students also liked the origami lanterns, although one student’s lantern didn’t go as planned.
“I thought the origami was fun, even though mine didn’t turn out right,” said Jackson Bobick.
The Chinese Language Learners Club likes to inform people about Chinese culture and events. But their favorite part is teaching the language.
Student's enjoying mooncakes, their new favorite treat. Photo by Autumn Bestgen
“I like teaching people Chinese and helping them learn phrases,” said Maki.
The students agreed that they had learned more about Chinese culture and language.
“I hope students can learn more about Chinese culture,” said Jiacheng Weng. “I learned how to make a lantern and that moon cakes are also good!”
The community aspect of the event is what really tied it all together, students were making new friends. Some hoped to see more people at future events to make more connections.
“I’ll definitely go to more events, it’s a club I foresee myself staying in for a long time or even for all of college,” said Jackson Bobick.
“I hope the club will have some bigger events like in the ballroom such as Chinese New Year that would be fun,” said Weng.
The club wants to keep doing events like this in the future, especially since they have restarted back up after COVID.
“It’s our first time doing this event this year, we are a club that died down during COVID so we have had to build ourselves back up,” said Wittenberg.
The club is very important to all of its board members. The students of the club find it important as well, even for the new people who came to the event.
“We have a passion for it and we want to share it with other people,” said Maki. “It’s really fun when you get to know about the culture.”
“I want to make friends with foreigners who want to learn Chinese. I want to learn more English so we could help each other,” said Ding.
The Mid-Autumn Festival was a successful celebration of friendship and community. The Chinese Language Learners Club hopes their other events will be as successful as this one, so if you missed this event there will be more this school year.