{"id":232,"date":"2009-11-04T16:14:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T20:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/?p=232"},"modified":"2021-01-11T19:57:40","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T19:57:40","slug":"international-club-celebrates-chinese-mid-autumn-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/2009\/11\/04\/international-club-celebrates-chinese-mid-autumn-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"International Club Celebrates Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nay Min Oo \u201812<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The International Club celebrated on October 7th the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the biggest festivals in China.\u00a0 More than 80 students, faculty, and staff attended the event at Crawley Forum. Among them were Eric Dinmore, Assistant Professor of History, and Dr. J. Z. Zhao, Assistant Professor of Economics.<\/p>\n

The celebration started with a video to introduce the Mid-Autumn Festival.\u00a0 The Chinese have a special affection for the moon, and there are many stories about the Mid-Autumn Festival.\u00a0 The most popular is the myth of Chang\u2019e, the lady who lives on the moon with her rabbit.\u00a0 On Mid-Autumn Day, millions of Chinese worship the Moon Lady.\u00a0 In addition they hold family reunions.\u00a0 Since a full moon represents the family, all the members will try to reach home on this day no matter how far apart they are.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Together, the family will enjoy the moon on a cloudless night and eat moon cakes\u2014an essential and special feature of this festival.\u00a0 The tradition of moon cakes started as the sacrificial offering to the moon and later became symbolic food.\u00a0 The first slice of the moon cake is always offered to the oldest one in the family to show respect to the elders.\u00a0 Although the general features of the Mid-Autumn Festival are the same, different regions have their own unique traditions.\u00a0 The video also showed the process of making moon cakes.<\/p>\n

After the video, Professor Anthony Zhang, Chinese Fulbright Scholar and professor of Chinese, led nine students from his class in reciting a traditional Chinese poem, “Shui Diao Ge Tou” (Thinking of You).\u00a0 After the recitation, the students sang the poem as Professor Zhang played the piano.<\/p>\n

Next, the Tai Yin Chinese Lion Dance team from Maryland performed the famous lion dance for the audience.\u00a0 This performance was made possible by the generous help of Mladen Cvijanovic, Assistant Dean of Students for Intercultural Affairs.\u00a0 The lion dance team consisted of five members who were passionate about this traditional Chinese art.\u00a0 They first explained the history of the lion dance.\u00a0 According to the myth, thousands of years ago, the Lion from the mountain would frequently go down to the villages and harm the livestock.\u00a0 However, after confrontation with the villagers, the Lion became their friend and protector.\u00a0 Therefore, to honor the Lion, people developed this highly acrobatic lion dance.<\/p>\n

The lively music of drums and gongs and\u00a0the energetic performance of the lion dance pumped up the atmosphere in Crawley Forum.\u00a0 The audience gave a round of applause whenever the team performed a breathtakingly difficult move.\u00a0 For example, very often the young man in front would jump in the air and land on his partner\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n

After the dance, the team also demonstrated Chinese Kung Fu such as Small Five Animal Fist, Big Five Animal Fist, Chinese Broad Sword, and Big Buddha Stick.\u00a0 The audience was amazed at these moves, which had been seen only in the Kung Fu movies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After a question-and-answer session, the performers taught the children present how to lion dance.<\/p>\n

As the final part of the event, the organizers served moon cakes and refreshments.\u00a0 All the guests left with a new understanding of another culture, the taste of delicious moon cakes in their mouths, and smiles on their faces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nay Min Oo \u201812 The International Club celebrated on October 7th the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the biggest festivals in China.\u00a0 More than 80 students, faculty, and staff attended the event at Crawley Forum. Among them were Eric Dinmore, Assistant Professor of History, and Dr. J. Z. Zhao, Assistant Professor of Economics. The celebration started with a video to introduce the Mid-Autumn Festival.\u00a0 The Chinese have a special affection for the moon, and there are many stories about the Mid-Autumn Festival.\u00a0 The most popular is the myth of Chang\u2019e, the lady who lives on the moon with her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-experiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2736,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/2736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hsc.edu\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}