The moon rose over Claremont on Tuesday, Sept. 29 as a group of Japanese language students learned how to make shiratama dango dumplings, their hands dusted with rice flour and their eyes fixed on a bowl of dough. The Oldenborg Center’s Japanese Language Resident Wako Sato mixed rice flour with water, explaining that the dough should be soft, but not too soft — like one’s earlobe.
The students were gathered for a moon-viewing party to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday observed, with regional variations, across much of East and Southeast Asia. Tuesday’s moon-viewing party was hosted by Sato and the Oldenborg Center to celebrate Otsukimi, meaning “moon-viewing,” Japan’s mid-autumn celebration.
Centered around the full moon and traditionally associated with family, reunion and togetherness, the Mid-Autumn Festival happens on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar every year. This year, the holiday fell on Friday, Sept. 25.
At the 5Cs, where students arrive from different places, carrying different versions of home with them, Mid-Autumn brings students together beneath the same moon.
“Having these kinds of events is a nice way to meet new people, especially early in the year,” said Alex Oh PO ’27. “I’m a senior, but a lot of my classmates are [first-years], so for them, this could be a great opportunity to meet other people, get to know people and enjoy really good food.”
The food was certainly a draw. For Jonny Junkins PO ’29, the moon-viewing party was not something he grew up celebrating. He heard about it through the Japanese program and decided to attend.
“It sounded like a good event — good vibe, good food. An excuse to break from my usual schedule,” Junkins said.
The moon-viewing party was only one of several Mid-Autumn celebrations happening across the 5Cs this year, each one a little different depending on who was holding it. At the Chinese Students and Scholars Association’s (CSSA) Mid-Autumn event, Scarlett Chen CM ’28 found something familiar in the holiday celebrations.
“It gives me an opportunity for me to wear my qipao, which is a Chinese traditional dress,” Chen said.
Not everyone celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival in the same way across East and Southeast Asia, or even across a single culture. If anything, Chen said, the holiday is a reminder that despite the diversity of Chinese cultures, Mid-Autumn festival gives students a chance to come together and celebrate something they have in common.
“China is huge, and even though you’re all Chinese, it doesn’t mean that your culture really fits together,” Chen said. “But the festival is definitely the same for everyone.”
Last year, Chen and her friends celebrated Lunar New Year with a dinner in Oldenborg, ordering Chinese food. For Chen, Oldenborg was a place where culture could happen without having to be planned.
“I think it’s just losing a place for people to naturally go there [to be] in the language environment,” she said regarding Oldenborg’s recent closure.
Since the center shut down over the summer, Chen worries about losing more than the building itself. Molly Liao PO ‘28, who lived in Oldenborg last year, feels that loss too. The closure has scattered a community she once drew support from.
“I used to pull a lot of friends from Oldenborg,” Liao said. “Now that
we’re all kind of scattered everywhere in different dorms, it’s kind of hard to pull up that community together.”
Mid-Autumn celebrations have become one way students are recreating those spaces for themselves.
Wenlu Xu, Oldenborg’s Chinese Language Resident, expected around 30 students at her celebration on Friday, Sept. 24. The turnout was more than double her prediction: tables filled, lines stretched and students waited for their turn to make mooncakes.
“I kind of become the mom, making this thing for all the kids I have,” Xu said. “Now I take the responsibility to make others feel we are celebrating this festival together.”
“I kind of become the mom, making this thing for all the kids I have,” Xu said. “Now I take the responsibility to make others feel we are celebrating this festival together.”
In other words, the responsibility was more than making mooncakes. It was carving a place of belonging for students.
For the Taiwanese American Students Association (TASA), Mid-Autumn is another way to build that feeling of belonging. The club’s celebration last week invited students to learn to tie Chinese knots, play mahjong, eat mooncakes and drink tea brought by the 5C Tea Circle.
“Mid-Autumn is a time when family and friends gather,” said Liao, who is also TASA’s vice president. “So we also try to bring in the community in TASA through this event.”
Liao said the event was especially meant to welcome first-year students and reconnect old members at the start of the semester — to gather “as a big family.” TASA, she added, is not only for Taiwanese students.
“We want to open our club not only to Taiwanese students, but also share our culture and welcome everyone,” she said.
Maybe that is why the Mid-Autumn Festival fits so neatly into the ecosystem of the 5Cs: The holiday does not require everyone to have the same traditions. The moon does not care which college you attend, which language you speak or where you call home. It rises over all of it anyway.
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