“2017 Mid-Autumn Get-Together” for International Students

Over 50 international students joined local classmates to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival with university management, including the President, Professor Xu Yangsheng, the Associate Vice-President for Global Affairs, Professor Jesús Seade, and the Associate Vice-President for Student Affairs, Professor Li Xia.

This festival is one of the most important in Chinese culture.  It occurs in late September or early October in accordance with the lunar calendar.  Historically it was a celebration of the harvest timed to coincide with the full moon.  Today the Festival tends to reunite friends and relatives and features the gift of mooncakes.

Zheng Jiahao, a student buddy for foreign students, opened the event with an introduction to the Mid-Autumn Festival’s origin and the evolution. Accompanied by traditional Chinese ritual music and dressed in Han Chinese Clothing, students from the Han Society staged a time-honored moon dance ritual, vividly expressing the culture of mid-autumn.

The Calligraphy Club, Jinhui Club and Han Society also organized several activities to help international students better understand traditional Chinese culture, including calligraphy, lantern making, and dressing in Hanfu.