Cambridge students celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of five important Chinese festivals, celebrated during August’s full moon each year (according to the Chinese lunar calendar), and the St Mary’s School, Cambridge community was delighted to celebrate the festival on Tuesday 29 September. The celebration means a lot to Chinese people; our students, parents, staff and governors came together to celebrate the festival, with a talent show put on by our Chinese students as well as our students of Mandarin Chinese.
The festival is a time for family reunions, usually celebrated outdoors in the family garden, so that the moon can be seen and appreciated, often whilst eating mooncake. Many large families will enjoy talent shows put on by the youngest members of the family, and smaller families are likely to join neighbours and friends to celebrate together. The festival is especially important to women, as the Mid-Autumn Festival was one of the only days in ancient China when married women would have been allowed to visit their parents.
The significance of mooncakes is attributed to the legend of the Jade Emperor – the ruler of all the gods and goddesses in heaven – who had ten sons, each one a sun in the sky, taking turns to light the earth. One day the sons misbehaved, all jumping into the sky at once from their palace in the sea. The sons were all burned and the people and creatures on earth began to die – until a famous archer, Hou Yi, shot nine of the sons to save the world. Although aware of his sons’ fault, the sorrow of the Jade Emperor drove him to a decision to kill Hou Yi, secretly. The Queen of the Jade Emperor overheard the plot, and disagreeing with her husband gave Hou Yi immortality medicine. Hou Yi’s apprentice became aware of the medicine and forced Hou Yi’s wife, Chang E, to give him the medicine. Chang E swallowed the medicine herself and became immortal. Becoming a goddess, Chang E floated away from the earth towards the Jade Palace in heaven, but, wishing to be able to see her husband, she instead flew to the moon (the closest a goddess could live to the earth).
On his return Hou Yi was distraught to discover his wife gone, and, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, he laid out mooncakes and other favourite foods of his wife in the garden, in hope that Chang E could return – wishing that no other families should be separated in the same way. What’s more, the linguistic similarity in Chinese of the word ‘round’ and ‘perfect’ lends itself to the traditional round shape of a mooncake; the symbolic representation of perfection.
The festival’s focus of connecting and celebrating family is important to us; our school community consists of students, their parents, staff and governors, and recognising celebrations from a range of cultures ties in with the Mary Ward characteristic upon which we’re focusing this year, of ‘Embracing diversity’. What’s more, for some of our Chinese students this Mid-Autumn Festival may be the first they have experienced away from their families. It has been an honour and pleasure to celebrate the festival with these girls, allowing them to share this tradition with friends and colleagues who may otherwise be unaware of the festival.
Our school has been offering Mandarin Chinese as an optional foreign language subject choice for some time, and for students taking this subject, the opportunity to experience Chinese culture in this way is fundamental in their understanding of the curriculum. Chinese is such a different style of language to European languages, it is ideal that the girls are able to enjoy their learning in a variety of ways, such as reciting poems, or singing and acting in Chinese.
Our celebration featured 35 girls who are Mandarin Chinese learners, from Year 7 to Year 9, as well as 19 of our Chinese boarders. Additionally 10 native Chinese and Cantonese boarders were on hand to help the younger boarders with their performances. Everyone involved did a superb job, the performances were all excellent. Special recognition must go to Jennifer S. for her dance as Chang E, and Peng W.’s piano performance of Cai Die Wu Xia, both of which really engaged the audience.
Other highlights were the Year 9 Mandarin students’ play of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the Year 7 Mandarin students’ poetry recital and sung performance. Well done to Lucy C., who is a native English speaker did an excellent job of introducing each performance in Mandarin, and similarly well done to Grace Y., a Chinese speaker, who excellently introduced each performance in English.
The event was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the cultural diversity in our school – and we are already looking forward to next year’s celebration!