Barkerville Historic Town and Park’s annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is set for Saturday, Sept. 9.
The festival honours the Cariboo region’s Chinese community and includes festival-themed activities throughout the day, evening entertainment at the Theatre Royal, and a lantern parade at dusk.
Mid-Autumn Moon festivals have been held in Asia for more than 1,000 years and they celebrate the abundance of the harvest with traditional music, martial art displays, lantern building, and the tasting of bean curd or lotus seed mooncakes shaped to reflect the harvest moon.
According to ancient Chinese astrology, the moon is at its roundest in the middle of the autumn season. Since the round shape of the full moon symbolizes family reunion and togetherness in Chinese culture, one of the preeminent festivals in the Chinese calendar is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.
“This season’s festival is especially important as 2023 marks 100 years since the Canadian government introduced the Chinese Immigration Act, commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act,” said Dr. Ying Ying Chen, the coordinator for Barkerville’s Historic Chinatown programs.
“From 1923 to 1947, Chinese immigration into Canada became illegal.”
In May of this year, Parks Canada Minister Steven Guilbeault announced the designation of the exclusion of Chinese Immigrants as an event of national historic significance.
The act was part of a long legacy of discrimination against Chinese people in Canada, including in Barkerville. Directly following the Head Tax, which forced Chinese immigrants to pay as much as $500 to enter Canada, the act intentionally disrupted family life by preventing Chinese men from visiting home or bringing family to Canada.
“Without descendants in Barkerville, the development of a flourishing Chinese community was hampered,” adds Dr. Chen.
“As mining slowed down in Barkerville, the Chinese community dispersed, and in 1934, only sixty Chinese people remained.”
In remembrance of this history, Barkerville will be celebrating its Mid-Autumn Moon Festival a little earlier than most to share this special day with the historic town’s summertime guests.
This year’s event will feature lion and dragon dances, lantern making workshops, trivia contests, mooncake tasting, celebratory banquets at the Lung Duck Tong restaurant, and a spectacular parade of illuminated paper lanterns that will fill the night with equal parts revelry and reverence for one of BC’s oldest and largest ethnic communities.
