When the Moon is Brightest: Shen Yun Celebrates Mid-Autumn

Once a year, in the middle of fall, our entire Shen Yun community puts a full stop on rehearsals and indulges in a day of food and fun. We join the nearly two billion people in East Asia and around the world in celebrating a traditional holiday that's been around for centuries: the Moon Festival.

According to Chinese tradition, the moon is roundest and brightest in the middle of fall—to be exact, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar. This year, the Harvest Moon falls on October 6. And at our Shen Yun headquarters in Dragon Springs, New York, it is a day like no other.

    

The day begins without the usual structured schedule. Whether you are a professional Shen Yun dancer, musician, or production member, whether you are a student at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts or Fei Tian College, an administrator, costume designer, or web writer, you might spend the morning sauntering through the Buddhist-style temple grounds or enjoy the changing leaves on the opposite hill. Or, you might be putting the finishing touches on a comical costume for that evening’s performance…

In the late afternoon, the entire Dragon Springs community gathers for a gargantuan feast. This is when the Mid-Autumn Festival most resembles an Asian Thanksgiving. It is a time of kinship and familial reunion.

For many Shen Yun performers, Dragon Springs is not just a home away from home.

"My fellow dancers, they're like my sisters and best friends rolled into one," says Shen Yun dancer Shindy Cai. "In the laughter, support, and quiet kindness of my friends, I discovered a second family."

“As the bright moon rises over the sea,
At the ends of the earth people share this moment”
- Seventh century Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Jiuling

It is no exaggeration to say that for many in our community, Shen Yun is their new family. We conducted a survey and found that a staggering 92 of our artists had been directly impacted by persecution in China. They lost fathers to torture, seen their mothers taken away and imprisoned for years, or fled China themselves as children. None of them can go back to China to see their family.

“Alone in a foreign land, a foreigner am I,
Every festive day, thoughts of my kindred double”
-Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei

But if you caught a glimpse of them at our dining hall, you wouldn’t be able to tell any of this. You would see them at a round table with their best friends, passing endless dishes around, barely hearing themselves over the jubilant clamor around them.

Evening is the highlight. It starts with a post-dinner show put on entirely by Shen Yun performers and Fei Tian students.

The first performance is the most anticipated—the Classical Chinese Dance Technique Showcase. Imagine a roster of All Stars in any sport, each performing their signature move—a slam dunk, a home run swing, a goalie’s save—in a fast-paced highlight reel. Now translate that to dance and that’s what you get. Or you could just watch the video from last year’s and see.

After that, what follows is whimsical fun. Dancers try their hands in choreography. Musicians try their feet in dance. Stage managers sing, and a singer dresses as an astronaut. Our Moon Festival show has seen dances with dinosaurs, bunnies, and talking moon cakes. It is creative. It is ridiculous. It is cathartic.

As night falls, the performance comes to a close and everyone walks out to an open pavilion. There, eight tables will have been laid out with literally thousands and thousands of moon cakes. Almond moon cakes. Red bean moon cakes. Taro moon cakes. Egg yolk moon cakes (yup, it’s like a hardboiled yolk inside a gooey cookie—a delicacy for Chinese and a taste acquired, or not, for others).

Some grab cakes and drift toward a cluster of lit lanterns, each with riddles hanging beneath them and prizes for the solvers. Others chat with their family or friends, mixing in an occasional look up at the sky.

The moon is brightest on this night of the year, and when the heavens are clear above the hills, gazing at it seems to connect time and space.

“Today’s people cannot see the moon of days past,
But today’s moon once shined upon the ancients”
- Tang Dynasty’s “immortal poet” Li Bai

And so, as we look up at the full moon, we both long for loved ones and cherish our family and community with us right here right now. There’s just something about the moon that makes you think about today, the past, and the future.

And about the next moon cake…