Mid-Autumn Festival 仲秋节

The Mid-Autumn Festival, 仲秋节，is the second biggest traditional Chinese festival and is celebrated on the 15th August of the lunar calendar. On this holiday usually families gather, enjoy the full moon, light some lanterns, eat some moon cakes, drink tea. The festival was originally a harvest festival. The mythological story can be read here. In the evening when the darkness falls, people light lanterns making the environment very cosy and beautiful. 

I spent the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节first joining a hike to a nearby hill organized by a ”Bitcoin and Coding” student organization here at the university. On the hill we had some snacks and played some games. All the others were Chinese, except for Weronika and me, and we got to practice our Chinese a lot. We were kinda, just by mistake, taken into this hike event since we just passed their stand a few days ago and they asked us to join. So we jumped to the chance and took it as an interesting experience. My chinese is very clumsy though, but with a few words English here and there and sometimes looking for help through pleco (the best offline translator for chinese = my best friend), things went well and I met locals. After the hike we all went to eat to a newly opened mexican restaurant. It was all a bit random but superfun!

Some random snacks we had. Mooncakes were included of course!

The view to the West Lake 西湖 and the full moon

We had a group competition to take selfies at specific points and here we pose in front of a statue of Mao Zedong.

Later on, I went out with some other internationals (Elena, Diane, Chiara, Riccardo, Michael, Simu…) to spend the evening. It was a crazy night.