News Report

Mid-Autumn Festival was Celebrated in Moi University

by Li Chang

On October 4^th, 2017, Lunar August 15^th. In China, this is the Mid-Autumn Festival in which thousands of families reunite. In Erdoret, Kenya, as volunteer teachers in Confucius Institute at Moi University, we are on our way to raising a Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon up in the hearts of the students in Kenya.

 The Mid-Autumn Festival, as a highlight of Chinese traditional festivals, not only carries Chinese culture, but also embodies the warmth among people. As messengers of cultural communication, our best concern lies on how to generalize the concept and sentiment of the Chinese traditional “home” to allow Kenyan students to accept the good prospects of the "lunar reflects people". After in-depth discussion, we finally divided the entire Mid-Autumn Festival activities into “knowledge reserve”, “skills exercises”, and “sensible experience”. These three progressive stages allowed students to layer out the mystery of the Mid-Autumn Festival and finally taste the sweetness of reunion.

According to the arrangement, we set up each stage of the event in the form of a booth. The booths corresponding to the three phases:
1. Knowledge Reserve: Mid-Autumn Quiz
2. Skills Exercises: soft pen calligraphy
3. Sensible Experience: moon cake tasting

On the morning of October 4th, our seven-member team rushed to the main campus of Moi University from our home. We began the intense arrangement as soon as we were on the stage of the student center. Finally, at 12 o'clock, our event officially opened.

Our activities require students to complete the “Mid-Autumn Quiz” and “soft pen calligraphy” in turn, and after obtaining the teachers' clearance and signing, they can receive an authentic Chinese Moon cake from the “moon cake tasting” booth.

In the first booth, Mid-Autumn Quiz, a small speaker was used to play an English-Chinese mid-autumn introduction recorded by Wang Yuan. The pure accent attracts students around to stop and study the strange Chinese characters on the display board. On the side of the exhibition board, two volunteer teachers, Wang Yuan and Jiang Zhaofeng, were teaching students to read the words "zhōng qiū jié（means Mid-Autumn Festival）," "bā yuè shí wǔ(means August 15^th )," and "yuè bǐng(means Moon Cake)" and explaining them carefully. The students were learning with both curiousness and seriousness.

When the students answered the question and successfully cleared the first booth, they could move to the second booth: soft pan calligraphy. Teacher Zhou Yuanyuan has prepared her own calligraphy works as the samples as well as the soft pens and ink. The "龍(Chinese traditional Dragon)", "中秋节(Mid-Autumn Festival)," and "盈月(full moon)" were placed on the table for students to choose from. If one student couldn't write the Chinese characters right, teacher Li Yiran would teach one stroke by another to help the students pass through.

Once the students successfully obtained the signatures of the two checkpoints, they can get moon cake at the third booth: moon cake tasting. The students who had won the moon cake had eaten so sweetly that the classmates who had not yet cleared the missions had suddenly had a burning ambition. Soon, a whole box of moon cakes had been eaten all up.

Some students even ran with excitement to claim the moon cakes. Some students took the characters they had just written and moon cakes they had just received to take selfies with their classmates. They excitedly said “moon cakes” in Chinese. More and more students were attracted by this exciting atmosphere and joined our customs clearance activities.

There is no autumn in Kenya. Therefore, we tried to explain to them the following nostalgia of the withering season and they listened very seriously. Looking at their faces, who were striving to speak Chinese and write Chinese characters, and happily eating Chinese moon cakes, we suddenly felt that everything was worthy. When they excitedly took selfies with us one by one, there was a thought rising in our hearts: our country has made a home in our body. Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in a foreign country, we could also experience “home” in this warm way.

At the beginning of the night, a Kenyan bright moon hung over the sky. We walked home from a tiring day. As we recalled the eager faces of our students from the event, we felt just as a poem reads, “I hope people will have an eternal reunion, and even we are thousands of miles apart, we are witnessing the same moon”. It is only in this full moon overseas that we finally understand: How long is the distance between the so-called “thousands of miles” and how long is the time “eternal” means.