The Henderson Campus Center became a place of celebration and togetherness as students gathered to celebrate and learn about the Mid-Autumn Festival.
On Friday, Sept. 29 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., the Association for Asian and Asian American Awareness celebrated the festival by providing students with mooncakes, refreshments and crafts activities. While students engaged in the activities, a video about the significance of the festival played in the background.
A5 President Aria Zong, ’25, said the festival originates from the legend of the Chinese Moon Goddess Chang’e, whose husband saved the Earth from having ten suns in the sky and was rewarded with an elixir of immortality. In order to keep the elixir safe from thieves, Chang’e drank the elixir, causing her to float to the moon as a goddess. Her husband honored the moon goddess on Earth by leaving out fruit and mooncakes.
“You typically go home to see your family and your close friends to gaze at the moon while enjoying fruits and mooncakes,” Zong said. “Different regions have their ways of making mooncakes and also their particular fillings and it’s always interesting to try different types of mooncakes.”
Zong said that, typically, her family does not celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival beyond eating mooncakes and being together.
“Usually we put on the event at Allegheny for education,” Zong said. “We want people to enjoy the festival and also learn about it, be appreciative and aware that such a culture exists and that it is important.”
At the event, A5 served a lemon tea drink for students to wash down different kinds of mooncakes. The filling of the mooncakes ranged from sweet to salty to give more flavor variety. For students wanting a modern flavor, matcha mooncakes were offered.
Kaiyla Jones, ’27, shared her experience with trying new food from an unfamiliar culture. The festival at the college was the first time she participated in the celebration, according to Jones.
“It was really cool to try a food from a new culture and everyone here has been really sweet,” Jones said. “I loved the red bean mooncakes and this tea is very delicious.”
The activities offered at the festival were writing blessings on rabbit-shaped paper to paste on a poster and sculpting rabbits. The significance behind the rabbit points to the legend of the Jade Rabbit, who inhabits the moon as a reward for offering himself as food when he could not provide food to the Jade Emperor, who had disguised himself as an old beggar, according to Zong.
“I am not particularly sure if writing goodwill messages is something we do for the Mid-Autumn festival specifically but I know it is extremely common among Asian holidays,” Zong said. “The significance of the activity was more for entertainment for participants who are interested in making such a craft but it also points to the fact that there is not just one moon god.”
Typically, the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated in China and other countries such as Japan around mid-September by playing with lanterns, family gatherings, eating mooncakes, moon gazing and eating a post-feast dessert called tong yuen according to an article on YP, a unit of South China Morning Post. Additionally, many of the traditions have evolved over time according to people’s tastes, but some have been kept the same.
Zong said the event was a success as A5 got a lot of feedback from alumni and students who were enjoying the activities offered.
“The event was supposed to be two hours and we started running out of mooncakes around the hour and 15 mark which I feel is feedback in its own form,” Zong said. “There were students, alumni and faculty members who all said they very much enjoyed the mooncakes, which is great and exactly what we were looking for.”