The St. Joe’s Asian Student Association (ASA) and Chinese Student and Scholar Association co-hosted the annual Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in the Mandeville Teletorium on the Hawk Hill campus Sept. 18. About 100 people attended the event, which featured Asian cuisine, performances and prize giveaways.
This year’s festival was also supported by the Nealis Program in Asian Studies and China Initiatives.
“[The festival] is a way for us to come together and celebrate something that’s unique to a lot of Asian cultures,” said Zoe Hwang ’26, vice president of ASA. “It really brings a lot of awareness to something that is very culturally significant.”
Sean Anjelo Maluchluw ’27, ASA publicist, said the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is a celebration in Chinese culture that coincides with harvest time in the middle of autumn.
“Similar to the modern time calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival brings about good luck, family, community, harvest, as well as happiness,” Maluchluw said.
Family and friends celebrate with lanterns, which symbolize light and good fortune, and share mooncake pastries, which, according to Maluchluw, are a symbol of longevity and harmony.
“It has an intricate design symbolizing Chinese patterns, and it resembles the moon because of its rounded nature,” Maluchluw said. “It usually contains seed paste, bean paste, egg yolk, and tastes more fulfilling rather than sweet.”
Asrar Abdelgadir ’28 attended the event and said the Mid-Autumn Festival was an opportunity for international students to celebrate their culture, and for people from different backgrounds to learn about and experience new traditions.
“I love the ideas [displayed] in Asian culture and how they highlight the theme of love,” Abdelgadir said. “You get a sense of this in the way they dress, in the way they sing the songs, the instruments they play, the dances they dance. It’s all very cool to me.”
Maluchluw said ASA events celebrate festivals from other Asian cultures, including Diwali, Korean movie nights and a Filipino celebration, halo-halo.
“What I hope for attendees to learn from this event is understanding the diversity and cultures in the world,” Maluchluw said. “It is important to think about our own values and morals, to better appreciate our backgrounds all together.”
