Moon cake alert: Mid-Autumn Moon Festivals in L.A. and beyond

It’s about time for the Mid-Autumn Festival, an important harvest event for Chinese and Vietnamese communities internationally. Every year, for about 3,000 years now, people come together to celebrate, dance and eat — among other traditional foods — moon cakes, which are dense pastries filled with red bean, lotus seeds and salty egg yolk.

The annual holiday occurs on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, which this year is Oct. 3. San Francisco’s Chinatown is ahead of the game, having already celebrated the popular cultural event this month. This coming weekend, you can partake of the festivities in Chicago or San Jose (both on Sept. 27), among other places.

But for the Los Angeles celebration, you’ve got a little more time to ready your taste buds. The free, annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3, 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m. at Central Plaza in Chinatown.

Entertainers will include the Shaolin Warriors of Chinatown, Chinese acrobats and various musicians. You’ll also be able to sample moon cakes from Chinatown’s Phoenix Bakery, see how they’re made, and learn about the origins of the Moon Festival via a presentation by the 2009 Miss L.A. Chinatown Queen. Moon- and Jupiter-viewing will be hosted by Griffith Observatory at the festival.

For the first time this year, there will be organized walks and bike rides connected with the festival. With the Moon Festival Fun Bike Ride, which begins at 3:30 p.m., you can participate in a competitive 5K run, a non-competitive 5K walk or a 25-mile bike ride to Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. A Moonlight 5K Run/Walk starts at 7:30 p.m. Entry fees apply for these events; see ChinatownLA.com for details on registering.

— Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photo: Moon cakes prepared for a previous year’s Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in Hanoi. Credit: Chitose Suzuki / Associated Press

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 1:19 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under Asia, California, Fall, Family & Kids, Festival, Gourmet, Los Angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.