The Mid-Autumn Festival is a vibrant harvest celebration and holiday observed across a number of Asian countries and communities worldwide. It traditionally falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Lunar calendar, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest.
The official start of the celebrations for 2025 is Monday, October 6th. Some countries and cultures celebrate across multiple days.
A Celebration of Harvest and Family
Predominately observed in countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, the festival is a time for gratitude, reunion, and observing the bountiful autumn harvest.
While the central theme of gathering with family and loved ones is universal, each culture brings its own unique traditions, whether it's a specific emphasis on the full moon, honoring ancestors, or celebrating children.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is known by several beautiful names, reflecting the cultural diversity of its observance:
Food is a significant element of the Mid-Autumn Festival, with specific treats that symbolize reunion and completeness:
Mooncakes are the most iconic food, widely eaten and gifted, in many communities that celebrate the "Mooncake Festival". These dense, round pastries traditionally feature rich fillings like lotus seed paste or red bean paste, often with salted duck egg yolks to represent the full moon. Modern variations include everything from ice cream to chocolate fillings.
In Vietnamese households, you may enjoy two main types of mooncakes: Bánh Dẻo, which is a sticky-soft, mochi-like pastry, and Bánh Nướng, the more common baked mooncake. Tết Trung Thu also features green rice flakes (Cốm) wrapped in lotus leaves and a colorful Five-Fruit Tray offered to ancestors.
In Korea during Chuseok, families prepare Songpyeon, small, crescent-shaped rice cakes steamed over pine needles. These are often filled with ingredients like toasted sesame seeds, chestnuts, or red bean paste. The crescent shape symbolizes future prosperity.
Joyhanna "Joy" Yoo (she/they) is a linguistic anthropologist whose work examines the circulation of Korean popular cultural genres with fieldwork based in Seoul, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Their research examines the meanings generated by language as it pertains to race and gender when cultural genres circulate. Joy has also published on Asian American racialization and linguistic appropriation in mediatized contexts. Her newer work examines the relationship between language loss, grief, and Korean diasporic belonging. They are especially passionate about student-centered teaching, mentorship, and student advocacy.
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This event is part of the Reframing Global Asias Conversation Series. For the conversation series this fall, the Global Asias Initiative is hosting guest speakers Shengxiao "Sole" Yu and Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo for a series of workshops & lectures.
Non-UMBC attendees: please e-mail Priya at priyab@umbc to RSVP and to receive a free parking pass
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This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.
Joyhanna "Joy" Yoo (she/they) is a linguistic anthropologist whose work examines the circulation of Korean popular cultural genres with fieldwork based in Seoul, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Their research examines the meanings generated by language as it pertains to race and gender when cultural genres circulate. Joy has also published on Asian American racialization and linguistic appropriation in mediatized contexts. Her newer work examines the relationship between language loss, grief, and Korean diasporic belonging. They are especially passionate about student-centered teaching, mentorship, and student advocacy.
||
This event is part of the Reframing Global Asias Conversation Series. For the conversation series this fall, the Global Asias Initiative is hosting guest speakers Shengxiao "Sole" Yu and Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo for a series of workshops & lectures.
Non-UMBC attendees: please e-mail Priya at priyab@umbc to RSVP and to receive a free parking pass
||
This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.
What: Writing Accountability Groups (WAGs) are voluntary and facilitated by fellow UMBC graduate students
Who: WAGs are comprised of a group of graduate students (usually 4-8 participants per group) interested in developing writing habits and accountability
Why: Develop habits of writing every day for a short, manageable period of time by setting goals and being accountable to WAG peers
When: WAG groups meet once a week for 60-90 minutes for 10-12 weeks. The group finds a weekly time mutually convenient to all group members.
AOK Library's Faculty has created a guide for facilitating Writing Accountability Groups. Visit here for more: https://lib.guides.umbc.edu/wags
Language as personal and communal expression: an interactive zine-making workshop
Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo and Shengxiao "Sole" Yu will lead participants through an exploration of their personal relationship to their heritage language(s). The workshop will ask participants to reflect on the relationship of language in their lives as it pertains to identity, family, thought, and more. The workshop aims to bring together students and broader community members to think about the connections between issues of language to broader community and social concerns.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
2-4pm
Location: CADVC Gallery, Fine Arts 105
Attendance is capped at 25 participants. Priority will be given to students. RSVP HERE!
About the speakers:
Joyhanna "Joy" Yoo (she/they) is a linguistic anthropologist whose work examines the circulation of Korean popular cultural genres with fieldwork based in Seoul, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Their research examines the meanings generated by language as it pertains to race and gender when cultural genres circulate. Joy has also published on Asian American racialization and linguistic appropriation in mediatized contexts. Her newer work examines the relationship between language loss, grief, and Korean diasporic belonging. They are especially passionate about student-centered teaching, mentorship, and student advocacy.
Shengxiao Yu, known by her nickname Sole, is a speaker, facilitator, writer, and social justice educator. She is the creator of Nectar, a space where she provides political education for the community through giving keynote speeches, facilitating workshops, and providing thought leadership. In 2024, Sole served as the activist-in-residence at the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this capacity, Sole conducted research to more deeply understand the AAPI electoral landscape and the role of mis- and disinformation. Sole is a writer for the Xin Sheng Project, a platform combating misinformation in the Chinese diaspora community by publishing in-language, progressive articles that shift perspectives and build intergenerational power. As a generation 1.5 Asian American, Sole is also working to build community among her fellow Asian Americans in order to build socio-political power and to lift up her lineage. Sole is inspired by BIPOC activists, grassroots community leaders, and all the intersectional movement ancestors who have paved the way.
||
This event is part of the Reframing Global Asias Conversation Series. For the conversation series this fall, the Global Asias Initiative is hosting guest speakers Shengxiao "Sole" Yu and Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo for a series of workshops & lectures.
||
This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.
Join us in celebrating Michael Hunt '06, Ph.D. '25, Director of the McNair Scholars Program, as he is honored with the Outstanding Staff Award at the 2025 UMBC Alumni Awards! His dedication to McNair Scholars and empowering first-generation, historically excluded, underrepresented students will be recognized on October 29 at Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena.
Language as personal and communal expression: an interactive zine-making workshop
Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo and Shengxiao "Sole" Yu will lead participants through an exploration of their personal relationship to their heritage language(s). The workshop will ask participants to reflect on the relationship of language in their lives as it pertains to identity, family, thought, and more. The workshop aims to bring together students and broader community members to think about the connections between issues of language to broader community and social concerns.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
2-4pm
Location: CADVC Gallery, Fine Arts 105
Attendance is capped at 25 participants. Priority will be given to students. RSVP HERE!
About the speakers:
Joyhanna "Joy" Yoo (she/they) is a linguistic anthropologist whose work examines the circulation of Korean popular cultural genres with fieldwork based in Seoul, Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Their research examines the meanings generated by language as it pertains to race and gender when cultural genres circulate. Joy has also published on Asian American racialization and linguistic appropriation in mediatized contexts. Her newer work examines the relationship between language loss, grief, and Korean diasporic belonging. They are especially passionate about student-centered teaching, mentorship, and student advocacy.
Shengxiao Yu, known by her nickname Sole, is a speaker, facilitator, writer, and social justice educator. She is the creator of Nectar, a space where she provides political education for the community through giving keynote speeches, facilitating workshops, and providing thought leadership. In 2024, Sole served as the activist-in-residence at the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this capacity, Sole conducted research to more deeply understand the AAPI electoral landscape and the role of mis- and disinformation. Sole is a writer for the Xin Sheng Project, a platform combating misinformation in the Chinese diaspora community by publishing in-language, progressive articles that shift perspectives and build intergenerational power. As a generation 1.5 Asian American, Sole is also working to build community among her fellow Asian Americans in order to build socio-political power and to lift up her lineage. Sole is inspired by BIPOC activists, grassroots community leaders, and all the intersectional movement ancestors who have paved the way.
||
This event is part of the Reframing Global Asias Conversation Series. For the conversation series this fall, the Global Asias Initiative is hosting guest speakers Shengxiao "Sole" Yu and Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo for a series of workshops & lectures.
||
This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.
House of Mirrors: How Mis- and Disinformation Amplify Imperialist Histories to Shape Asian American Political Participation in California's 45th Congressional District
In many Asian American spaces, we are witnessing narrative trends that contribute to tensions within, across, and about our communities. This research project seeks to more deeply understand these tensions through a case study of the California 45th congressional district where two Asian American candidates ran in 2024 in a race set against the backdrop of imperialism, war, trauma, displacement, grief, healing, identity-building, identity politics, electoral power, and most of all, our shared desire to be seen as who we are.
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
10:30am-11:45am
Location: AOK Library Gallery
Coffee, tea & light breakfast provided
About the speaker:
Shengxiao Yu, known by her nickname Sole, is a speaker, facilitator, writer, and social justice educator. She is the creator of Nectar, a space where she provides political education for the community through giving keynote speeches, facilitating workshops, and providing thought leadership. In 2024, Sole served as the activist-in-residence at the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this capacity, Sole conducted research to more deeply understand the AAPI electoral landscape and the role of mis- and disinformation. Sole is a writer for the Xin Sheng Project, a platform combating misinformation in the Chinese diaspora community by publishing in-language, progressive articles that shift perspectives and build intergenerational power. As a generation 1.5 Asian American, Sole is also working to build community among her fellow Asian Americans in order to build socio-political power and to lift up her lineage. Sole is inspired by BIPOC activists, grassroots community leaders, and all the intersectional movement ancestors who have paved the way.
||
This event is part of the Reframing Global Asias Conversation Series. For the conversation series this fall, the Global Asias Initiative is hosting guest speakers Shengxiao "Sole" Yu and Dr. Joyhanna Jung Yoo for a series of workshops & lectures.
Non-UMBC attendees: please e-mail Priya at priyab@umbc to RSVP and to receive a free parking pass
||
This event is open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University's nondiscrimination policy.