Asian Culture Club Hosts Mid Autumn Tea and Mooncake Social
Elliott Hove | Sept. 29, 2026
Tea, mandarin oranges and mooncakes are shared during Asian Culture Club’s celebration of Mid Autumn Festival on Sep. 25 2026 at Warren Wilson college in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Chúc mừng Tết Trung Thu! 中秋节快乐! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Warren Wilson College (WWC)’s Asian Culture Club (ACC) hosted a warm, cozy social to celebrate the coming of the colder months (as students have felt in the past few days) on Sept. 25, 2026. The event was well attended, replete with mooncakes, clementines and lots and lots of tea.
Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated mostly in China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan, is a festival held on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month each year. Festivities include gatherings of close friends and family to celebrate the harvest, lighting lanterns and eating mooncakes to honor the fall moon.
A mandarin orange peel lies open during Asian Culture Club’s celebration of Mid Autumn Festival on Sep. 25 2026 at Warren Wilson college in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Traditionally, the festival honors the story of Hou Yi and Chang’e, two lovers who are separated between the earth and the moon. It is said that on the day of the Mid-Autumn festival, these two can meet again.
On WWC campus, the Asian Culture Club held festivities with an intimate and relaxed atmosphere in the Sutton dorm. The event was summarized by junior and ACC co-president Jay Char, who explained how the club's first major event on campus went successfully.
“It was quite lovely,” Char said. “I think we had maybe 20 or so people in here. We tried a lot of yummy tea. We just had a lovely time, chatted, drank tea [and] talked about school.”
Sophomore Ziting Fan, an international student from China and also a co-president of ACC, detailed how the event reminded her of family gatherings and celebrations at home.
“I love how people showed up [and] engaged and talked as we ate mooncakes,” Fan said. “It makes me feel really happy that there’s a place here I’m not so unfamiliar with.”
Char detailed the favorite flavors of mooncakes and teas at the event, of which there were many.
“We tried a bunch of different flavors of mooncakes… three or four different varieties of tea and some clementines,” Char said. “We shared a bunch of [mooncakes] between everybody… Everybody seemed to love the red bean [flavor]… [and] ginger turmeric tea.”
Both Fan and Char confirmed red bean mooncakes and ginger turmeric tea were their favorites.
Attendees of the Asian Culture Club’s celebration of Mid Autumn Festival gather in Sutton Dorm on Sep. 25 2026 at Warren Wilson college in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
As the fall semester ploughs onward into the frigid months, Char noted that ACC hopes to have more celebrations and events on campus.
“We [will] have a Diwali event coming up later this semester,” Char said. “I would really love to try and organize another shuttle to the grocery stores, probably as it gets closer to finals season, because it's hard to get groceries around that time.”
Whether community members have celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival before or not, the time of transition into autumnal colors, cooler temperatures and thicker layers is an excellent opportunity to gather with friends and loved ones.