This September, Greeley’s Chinese Club and the Chinese Language class teamed up to celebrate the Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, or 中秋节; Zhōng qiūjié in Chinese, which is celebrated annually on the fifteenth day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar. The festival, which is derived from ancient Chinese celestial worship, is the second most important holiday in Chinese culture (after Lunar New Year), celebrating and encouraging the fall harvest.
Similar to Thanksgiving, the Mid-Autumn Festival values reunion, sustenance, and togetherness, and is often a time for family gatherings. Traditionally, the holiday is also observed with prayer and worship to the moon as it is said that on this night the moon is closest to the Earth and is the largest, roundest, and brightest it will ever be. It also involves eating traditional foods such as seasonal fruits, both fresh and dried, and mooncakes, which are representative of reunion. Oftentimes, lanterns are hung in public places, and people gather to guess the riddles written on the lanterns. The Chinese Club and Chinese language students aimed to replicate these celebrations of togetherness in the Greeley community.
In preparation for the festival, Greeley’s Chinese Club hung up various posters, paintings, and other decorations informing about the festival’s history, traditions, and legends, in the cafeteria and in the school library. They also readied a photo gallery to be displayed at the Chappaqua Public Library to be enjoyed by the greater community. On the day before the festival, Friday, September 9, members of the club and language class shared homemade mooncakes, black tea, and bubble tea with Greeley staff and students in the Academic Commons to celebrate. Posters and lantern riddles created by the Chinese language students were also hung up in the Academic Commons to provide Greeley with a deeper understanding of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Co-president of the Greeley Chinese Club, Jiachen (Jayden) Cao, shared that the Moon Festival celebration was a great success—a large number of students and teachers visited the Academic Commons to try out the mooncakes and guess at lantern riddles. Additionally, “The photo gallery [placed in the Chappaqua Library] helped to educate [the community] about [this] significant Chinese holiday, and decorations around our school created an atmosphere filled with elements of Chinese culture.”
Cao added that it is “Events like these [that] raise the level of cultural awareness and make Greeley a more inclusive community,” as students who are unfamiliar about these aspects of culture are able to take in new information, making them more culturally literate. For example, sophomore Chaitra Mynampati mentioned that she was able to learn a lot about the history and traditions of the festival, as well as about the art behind traditional Chinese characters. She felt that the celebration was informative and jubilant, which “provided students with a wider understanding of different cultures in the world and [brought] awareness about cultural diversity.”