Mid Autumn Festival is a time to be with friends and family and celebrate the beauty of the moon. For some NYU Shanghai students, it will be their first time sampling mooncakes and exploring the variety of flavors each box has to offer- while also experiencing what this time of year means in China. Beyond making meaning of the folk tale of Chang’e and Houyin, it also allows students to discover what the festival means to them personally.
Muhammadmirzo Olimov ’30
Major: Computer science
Hometown: Namangan, Uzbekistan
Favorite mooncake flavor: still exploring
This year will be Muhammadmirzo’s first introduction to Mid-Autumn Festival — but some of the traditions surrounding the holiday already feel familiar. Back home, he explained, families often prepare plov — Uzbekistan’s national rice dish — around the festival of Eid and share it with others. Now in Shanghai, the Computer Science major is curious to experience another holiday shaped by food, community and the lunar calendar. After tasting a pineapple-flavored mooncake, he said he is excited to explore other mooncake flavors and enjoy the holiday “I want to see the decorations around the city, and I want to shoot a vlog about it,” he said. With a Chinese roommate and a new city to explore, he’s looking forward to experiencing Mid-Autumn Festival first-hand.
Name: Sky Gardner ’30
Hometown: LA
Major: undecided
Favorite mooncake flavor: red bean filling
For Skye Gardner ’30, Mid-Autumn Festival has always been less about where she celebrates than who she celebrates with. “Whenever I think about it, the first thing that comes to my mind is all the friends that I spend that time with,” Gardner said. Growing up in California, Gardner attended a Chinese-language school, where she made lanterns, learned traditional stories, made mooncakes and joined holiday celebrations with classmates and their families. Now celebrating the festival in China for the first time, she plans to gather with friends for a small potluck dinner, sample snow skin and lava custard mooncakes and explore the festivities around Shanghai. “It's an experience for me to just be social and let other people teach me about their life and about their customs.”
Name: Arthur Vadjal ’29
Hometown: Santa Monica, USA and Beijing
Major: Double major – Social science (Urban Studies) and Global China Studies
Favorite Mooncake: Red bean paste and green mung bean
For sophomore Arthur Vadnell, Mid-Autumn Festival is closely tied to memories of growing up in Beijing. As a child, he remembers eating sweet red bean paste and green mung bean paste mooncakes, spending time at his grandparents’ home and learning the stories surrounding the holiday, including the legend of Chang’e and the moon. He and his family would eat a special Mid-Autumn Festival dinner, either home-cooked or prepared by a restaurant. “It felt like a moment where I could really relish and enjoy these culturally Chinese festivities,” he said. He might have eaten too many mooncakes as a child, he admits. “I have completely lost interest since.” Although he says his celebrations have become more low-key as he’s gotten older, the holiday remains part of the cultural landscape of his childhood. “Mid-Autumn Festival — it’s literally everywhere,” he recalls.
Annie Yang ’29
Hometown: Orlando, FL
Major: Interactive Media Arts, Minor in Chinese
Favorite Mooncake: Red bean paste
For sophomore Annie, Mid-Autumn Festival has always centered around one thing: being together. Growing up in Orlando, Florida in a family from Fuzhou, Fujian, she remembers her family buying the same mooncakes each year and sharing them at home. In recent years, her family created a new tradition: baking their own mooncakes. Her mother would prepare the ingredients, weighing each mooncake and different fillings, including bean paste, black sesame, and lotus seed paste. “They were kind of difficult to make,” she recalls, but “the most fun part would be putting them into mooncake molds.” The tradition they created together gave the holiday greater meaning. “It’s very rewarding to see it come together at the end,” she said. This year, she’ll bring her family’s tradition to campus. Since she’ll be working as a Resident Assistant on during the holiday, Annie plans to stay in the residence hall, eat mooncakes and celebrate with her roommates, who, coincidentally, also have family roots in Fuzhou.