In Taiwan, where Lee is from, the festival is “an extended family event,” with an outdoor barbecue.Īshley Fujiyama, a freshman majoring in computer science from McLean, Virginia, found Penn Q&A through the student activities fair and was interested, “given that I fit in that intersectionality,” says Fujiyama. In his hometown of San Francisco, Zhan celebrates the mid-autumn festival with cousins, having moon cakes and family time.
![chinese moon festival midautumn chinese moon festival midautumn](http://www.familyholiday.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mid-Autumn-Moon-Festival-.jpeg)
Nursing students Aaron Zhan, Irene Lee, Darah Waskin, and Jess Barnett came to the festival after finishing 12-hour clinical shifts. “We’re trying to get our parents to accept who we are.” “Being queer and Asian is a difficult thing because a lot of us are immigrants or are children of immigrants,” he says. The senior biochemistry major from Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, joined the organization during his freshman year and took on a leadership role because he is passionate about supporting other students. Robert Chen, president of Penn Q&A, helped to organize the event. “We wanted to celebrate more aspects of our community’s diversity,” especially in terms of intersectionality, she says. “We want to celebrate all people” at the LGBT Center, “not just those who may be transgender or queer people,” she says. Next year, she wants to collaborate with more campus organizations to reach more people. The event was very popular, Cross says, meeting its capacity of 100 registrants within 24 hours. The moon festival is a “superb, big festival in China,” Zhang says, and the students wanted to meet and talk with other people and enjoy the food, she says. Both from Bejing, Hu and Zhang are in the Master of City Planning program and met through a mutual friend.
![chinese moon festival midautumn chinese moon festival midautumn](https://www.globalsourcingblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mid15.jpg)
“The perfect, rounded moon has a meaning of reunion and the family being together,” says Zhuoran Hu, who attended with Jing Zhang. “You build your own family you build your own community.” The Center invited Penn students to celebrate family “however you define it” with a moon viewing, cultural information, and individually-wrapped meals from local Taiwanese restaurant Baology. “Some folks in our community might not have close family relationships,” says LGBT Center Director Erin Cross. The group partnered with the Penn Taiwanese Society and the LGBT Center hosted the event on Sept. First celebrated more than 3,000 years ago, the mid-autumn event was originally a harvest festival, but today it has evolved to center on reunion with family, according to Penn Queer and Asian (Penn Q&A).
#CHINESE MOON FESTIVAL MIDAUTUMN FULL#
On the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, families gather to eat sweet mooncakes and celebrate the rising of the full moon.