MOON CAKES were a highlight of the mid-autumn Moon Festival at the Josten house. Photo: Tyler O'Neil

Despite a cloud-covered Clive sky, Drake students and faculty gathered at the home of the host family to students Sheng Peng (AS3) and Alvin Tam (B4) to celebrate Friday’s Chinese Moon Festival.

About 30 friends and classmates of Peng and Tam, both international students studying at Drake, as well as Darcie Vandegrift – associate professor of sociology – gathered to celebrate the holiday akin to America’s Thanksgiving.

The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, falls 15 days into the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

“We are celebrating the day that the moon is largest and most complete, which is a time for us to reunite with friends and family and share time and good food with each other,” Peng said.

Good food was in no shortage. Popular Chinese cuisine such as dumplings, egg drop soup and sesame chicken were served. Not to mention moon cakes, the traditional treat of the holiday, were aplenty.

Like much of Chinese culture, the holiday is rich with folklore – several versions of it. According to one story explained by Tam, the Chinese king of gods sent his unfaithful wife to the moon as punishment – hence, giving us the face we see on the moon. Her assistants on earth then made moon cakes in her honor as a plea for family unity.

In another story, from Moonfestival.org, the Divine Archer Hou Yi heroically shot nine of the 10 suns that were supposed to scorch the crop and create drought. His skill earned him a pill containing the elixir of life. He was advised to quickly swallow this pill, but first prepare through prayer and fasting for a year.

Unfortunately, his wife Chang-O was lured to the pill too soon and, after swallowing it, was sent into the sky. Although Yi sped after her, he could not catch her. Chang-O finally landed on the moon, where she ordered a hare to pound another pill so she could return to her husband. The hare is still pounding today, but, once a year, when the moon is full, Yi is able to visit his wife.

In the Moon Festival’s spirit of togetherness and sharing, members of non-governmental organizations from Tonga, West Bank, Bangladesh and Nepal also attended the party, along with members of the Iowa Council for International Understanding.

“Tonight is to celebrate friends and to celebrate cultures, and we have many cultures here tonight,” ICIU board member Susan Josten said. She is one of the host parents of Peng and Tam.

The NGO representatives are in America through the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. For three of the four, it was their first travel experience in the United States.

Away from their families on this special Chinese holiday, the representatives were grateful for the learning experience abroad. Each offered a gift to Josten from his or her home country.

Aarati Khanal, from Nepal, was one of the guests at the Moon Festival.

“I have now seen what is liberty, I have seen what is life and I have seen what is the pursuit of happiness,” she said.