NANYANG MBA

Multi- cultural Mid- autumn Festival

Mid-autumn festivals is celebrated yearly in August or September, it is celebrated by Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese from different part of the world.

One  September afternoon , the full- time MBA participants gathered at the MBA lounge to celebrate this special festival with one another. Vice President-Culture , Singaporean Satheeish Subramaniam, opened the event by giving a brief introduction of what the mid- autumn festival is. Following Satheeish were Sumin Lee, Liu Xi, and Tracy Nguyen who individually expounded on how this extraordinary festival is being celebrated by the Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese, respectively. After learning more about the multi-cultural similarities and differences  of mid-autumn festival, the MBA participants feasted merrily over Chinese and Korean moon cakes.

On the very same day, Satheeish and Sumin headed over to NTU@one- north campus located at the Buona Vista to introduce the festival to the MBA part timers  and of course, to share the moon cakes. 

Different country has its own ways of celebrating Mid-Autumn festivals. We  look at 4 countries on how they celebrate the festivals. 

Singapore

During the mid-autumn festival in Singapore, this is the time of the year where children light up the lanterns and adults indulge themselves with mooncakes. Mid-Autumn festivals were celebrated in Singapore’s hotspot such as Gardens by the Bay, China town and esplanade. Those places are adorned with variations of decorated lanterns and traditional paper cut outs which are lighted at night. It is also celebrated in heartland where there will be lantern design competitions and free snacks such as Din Ding and Dragon’s Beard Candy.

Korean

“Chu-seok”, which means moon festival in English, is a national holiday of Korean Thanksgiving and falls on August 15 of the lunar calendar. Koreans are fond of celebrating this important day as Chu-seok is a period when separated family members get to gather once more to share their lives while enjoying the newly harvested grains and fruits. One of the main highlights of this festival is Songpyun (Korean moon cake), which is made with rice and various sweeteners.

The most important activities done during Chu-seok are giving thanks to ancestors and to Mother Nature for providing a bountiful harvest, wearing of traditional Korean clothes Han- Bok, and looking intently at the full moon as everyone makes a wish.

China

On the festival day, family members gather to offer sacrifice to the moon, appreciate the bright full moon, eat moon cakes, and express strong yearnings toward family members and friends who live afar. In addition, there are some other customs like playing lanterns and dragon & lion dances in some regions. The unique customs of ethnic minorities are interesting as well, such as “chasing the moon” of the Mongolians, and “stealing vegetables or fruits” of the Dong people.

The Moon Cake is the special food of Mid-Autumn Festival. On that day, people sacrifice moon cakes to the moon as an offering and eat them for celebration. Moon cakes come in various flavours according to the region. The moon cakes are round, symbolizing the reunion of a family, so it is easy to understand how the eating of moon cakes under the round moon can evoke longing for distant relatives and friends. Nowadays, people present moon cakes to relatives and friends to demonstrate that they wish them a long and happy life. 

Vietnam

Mid-autumn festival is a traditional festival wherein kids run around holding on to their candle- lit lanterns, eating moon cakes with their parents while enjoying the round beautiful full moon in the sky. Kids in Vietnam celebrate the mid- autumn festival by listening to the legend about a man named Chu Cuoi, sitting under the huge tree, being very lonely on the moon. In this story, Cuoi accidentally found out about a tree that can resurrect lives in the forest when he saw a mother tiger resurrect her dead cub by feeding her the leaves from that tree. He cut a branch of the tree and then planted it on his house garden. Since then, he became very famous because he can resurrect lives just by feeding the dead people the leaves from the tree. Upon leaving his home, his enemy, being very jealous, came and killed Cuoi’s beautiful wife, taking out her intestines and throwing it away. Ironically though, Cuoi cannot resurrect his wife just by feeding the leaves since the intestines are no longer there. His dog voluntarily asked him to use his intestines instead. Cuoi did that to resurrect his wife and made clay intestine to save his dog as well. However, after resurrection, with the dog’s intestines, the wife did not return to her usual self. Once, she forgot to water the magical tree. Thus, the magical tree became very angry and flew into the sky. Seeing that, Cuoi hurriedly rushes to seize the roots to hold it back. However, the tree kept flying up, pulling Cuoi to the moon.

Traditional mooncake is made from chewy brown dough covering a sweet dense filling which is lotus seed paste and sometimes containing salted egg yolks. The same dough is used to make fish or piglet biscuits which are popular among children. Today mooncakes are also made of flaky pastry and snow skin with different flavours such as durian, ice-cream, chocolate, and more.

We enjoyed tasting the different variations of Mooncakes and we learn how different countries celebrated Mid-Autumn festivals.