You may have heard of the Chinese new year, but there are holidays that take place in the fall semester as well. In the fall semester you will have two days off in October for Chinese National Day and the Day After Chinese Mid Autumn Festival, in addition to a week off for reading week. Unfortunately it is pretty much impossible to go home for thanksgiving due to the price, time difference, and the fact that classes are still taking place. Trips are best for the reading week break but for the other holidays it is nice to stay in Hong Kong because there are traditional Chinese events that you will miss if you leave.
Chinese National Day takes place on the first day of October. In my case the holiday took place on a Sunday so it was recognized on the following Monday, but the festivities still take place on the 1st. The holiday recognizes the founding of the People’s Republic of China and is celebrated in mainland China, Macau, and Hong Kong. There are lots of organized festivities including fireworks, dancing, and other performances.
To take in these celebrations there are a number of designated locations to go to in Hong Kong. My friends and I decided to go to the IFC mall in Central for a viewing of the fireworks show with a number of local citizens. The show was incredible and I actually felt some pride in myself for accomplishing my goal. I knew when I came to college I was going to take on this challenge of living in Hong Kong and in this moment I felt like I had accomplished that goal.
The Hong Kong ISN (International Student Network) is a group that organizes events for exchange students from all the local Universities in Hong Kong. They organize a major annual pub crawl (This was the 7th of its kind) for students for Chinese National Day too! It is a lot of fun because you get the opportunity to meet exchange students from other Universities and make even more connections. It is also pretty great because the locals who run it show you how to celebrate the holiday the Chinese way.
The other major fall semester holiday is The Day After Mid Autumn Festival. The reason for this long name is that the actual Autumn Festival takes place on October 3rd, but the holiday is recognized by companies and HKU on the following day because they assume people will be busy the night prior.
So what is the Mid Autumn Festival then? It is a harvest festival created by Vietnamese and Chinese people that celebrates the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar with full moon at night. People are meant to give thanks to the harvest but also to other good things in their lives, similar to thanksgiving, and eat moon cakes to celebrate the full moon viewing.
Unfortunately, we were unable to see the moon since it was raining on and off throughout the night. The events were awesome though, and gave me a chance to see Chinese culture in action! Finding out where was best to go was pretty tricky and we were actually in the wrong area at first. There are essentially multiple performances all around the Hong Kong area but there is one major one that takes place near Victoria Park. We were able to see the parade and dragon dancing on the street. They stuck tons of incenses in the dragon and then lit them on fire and the dragon lit up, it was a sight to see for sure. They danced the dragon around to the beat of Chinese drumming and everyone cheered them on. We also got the chance to light lanterns and let them float up into the sky.
The following night I went with my friends to a party that a local Hong Konger friend of ours was hosting. This was a chance for us to learn about some of the personal traditions that a local Chinese person had. Beyond the things that everyone does we learned what he typically did with his family for the Mid Autumn Festival. He also made us some moon cakes! I did not get the opportunity to actually eat them the night prior. I was so upset that I missed out on it originally so I was pleasantly surprised when he served them. Also I am not kidding when I say these were the best moon cakes I’ve ever had! While I do not pretend to be all that knowledgeable in the area of moon cakes, I have had them before and none tasted like our friend’s moon cakes!
I really enjoyed the environment of the events because there were kids and adults all just having a really good time and celebrating something familiar to them. This was comforting and reminded me of how I love getting together with my family for U.S. holidays. I think that being able to attend something like this is tremendously important because it really allows you to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes.
Other interesting things about the holiday week is that there is a major in-flow of people into the region, either coming home or just coming to see everything that is going on. I have never seen so many people on the street in the Causeway Bay area before. The MTR also runs all night on the actual holiday days, as opposed to being closed around 1 in the morning. It was super convenient to not have to take a cab home late at night.
So while it may be somewhat tempting to travel during this time with both holidays being so close together, I actually recommend you don’t. You can travel any other weekend, reading week, or the week before finals start. I think that you will find you are glad you got to see both of these incredible events if you do. After all, experiencing such a Hong Kong event will be the reason you are studying abroad here in the first place.
