Traditionally, the Mid-Autumn Festival marks an occasion for reunion with family members. Mooncakes, the conventional food for the festival, are a symbol of family reunion. This year, to create an immersive experience of both the Mid-Autumn Festival and its associated food cultures online, the UBC Chinese Language Program held the “2021 Virtual Mooncake Maker with Your Own Works” event. Receiving more than 200 submissions of creative works, the event enjoyed a huge success. Together, every participant celebrated this festival and learned about its customs and traditions. Although the pandemic prevented the holding of an in-person event, this online gathering instead enabled students to showcase their creativity and celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in their own unique ways!
Each and every submission represented a different way of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, and an exhibition of some participants’ inspiring works can be viewed HERE.
Exhibition of Some Students’ Submissions
During the process of submission, students from Heritage, Non-Heritage, and Literature courses ranging from the beginner to advanced levels all had the opportunity to learn about traditional customs and folktales associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival. Not only did they read stories on the festival’s origin, but they also participated in the traditional game of solving lantern riddles.
Lantern riddles for the students
Lantern riddles for the studentsApart from learning more about the festival, the participants also applied their Mandarin skills and shared their best wishes when submitting their creative pieces. To participate, a student could write either a Mid-Autumn wish or a story related to the festival to accompany their original image. The former option enabled the participants to express their nostalgia, while the latter showcased their endless creativity. Both demonstrated the students’ ingenuity, language skills, and understanding of the culture.
Submission from Alexa Elizondo Gil, a student from CHIN131. The caption reads: “Families reunite./Children eat mooncakes./Find Chang’e and the rabbit on the moon.”
Submission from Alexa Elizondo Gil, a student from CHIN131. The caption reads: “Families reunite./Children eat mooncakes./Find Chang’e and the rabbit on the moon.”Image Submission from Wuji Zhang, a student from CHIN241, who wrote: “Seeing the amazing submissions of other students really moved me, and made me realize how a lot of heritage students really want to reconnect with their family’s language and heritage.”
Image Submission from Wuji Zhang, a student from CHIN241, who wrote: “Seeing the amazing submissions of other students really moved me, and made me realize how a lot of heritage students really want to reconnect with their family’s language and heritage.”Image submission of an anonymous student from CHIN 471
Image submission of an anonymous student from CHIN 471Alternatively, the participants could choose to submit an original video on how they celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, which encouraged them to showcase their creativity with a different multimedia outlet. For example, Richard Jiang, a student from CHIN 415, beautifully performed a classic Mid-Autumn Festival song called The Moon Represents My Heart:
Video submission from Richard Jiang, a student from CHIN 415
Richard’s talented performance has received more than ten thousand views on CLP’s Instagram as of mid-October! Moreover, some students from advanced literature courses recorded a creative vlog of an exciting hunting trip for various kinds of mooncakes in a grocery store full of delicious Mid-Autumn Festival foods. They also shared the inner stuffing of their favorite mooncakes with the audience:
Video submission of anonymous students from CHIN 481 & CHIN 483
Kimberley Ong, a beginner-level Heritage student, introduces in her video what people like to do on the Mid-Autumn Festival, and proposes banana bread as an innovative substitute for mooncakes when there is none around. Her video shows that the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated from the heart, and that there are many different ways of celebrating this festival meaningfully:
Video submission from Kimberley Ong, a student from CHIN 141
Lastly, Jinru Yan, a literature course student, shows us the detailed steps of how to make a mooncake from scratch. Jinru demonstrates the complicated process of mooncake-making with great ease and attentiveness to detail. She even shows the audience how to stamp different flower patterns on mooncakes! This peaceful video not only proves Jinru to be a true masterchef, but will also be an inspiration for those interested in trying their own hands on making mooncakes:
Video submission from Jinru Yan, a student from CHIN 485
After students submitted their work, they received a hand-drawn mooncake from the Chinese Language Program as a virtual Mid-Autumn Festival gift. This enhanced the students’ sense of participation in and interaction with the event, making everyone feel even more interconnected with one another via their shared gifts.
Hand-drawn virtual mooncake gifts from the Chinese Language Program
In summary, the “2021 Virtual Mooncake Maker with Your Own Works” event was a huge success in bringing students from different learning levels and cultural backgrounds together online. The inclusivity of this Mid-Autumn Festival event truly exemplifies the sense of community and belonging that the Chinese Language Program constantly creates for its students. The event created a virtual space for students to express their creativity and virtually reunite with their Chinese Language Program family! It inspired participants to engage with the Mid-Autumn Festival and made a long-awaited reunion at the Chinese Language Program possible.
