Mid-Autumn Festival｜Nurturing Young Hearts with Culture, Celebrating Tradition in Togetherness

As autumn breezes arrive and the fragrance of osmanthus fills the air, the festive spirit of the Mid-Autumn Festival envelops Harrow Beijing once again. For our students, the Mid-Autumn Festival is not only a celebration of reunion, but also a meaningful opportunity for cultural exploration and connection with China’s rich traditions. Across the school, students engaged in multi-faceted learning experiences around themes of traditional culture, artistic creation, and language expression.

From handmade mooncakes to calligraphy, from folk arts to classical poetry, students immersed themselves in a wide range of festive activities that allowed them to experience culture with their hearts, express it with their hands, and articulate it through Chinese. With every hands-on activity, tradition comes alive – and becomes part of their daily lives.

Kindergarten & Lower School
Playful Explorations
and Cultural Beginnings

In the Kindergarten & Lower School, teachers designed a series of immersive cultural experiences that blended Chinese and Art lessons, transforming the Mid-Autumn Festival into a joyful and meaningful cross-disciplinary journey.

Younger students stepped into a “festival food lab” where the school canteen became a traditional mooncake workshop. With guidance, children kneaded dough, shaped fillings, and pressed moulds – each step filled with excitement and laughter. The fragrant treats weren’t just desserts, but a hands-on introduction to Chinese culinary traditions. Our youngest learners in the Early Years also joined the fun, experiencing cultural rituals and learning through play and creation.

Meanwhile, the art rooms were brimming with festive creativity. In Year 2, students used collage and painting to create colourful “Mid-Autumn Windows” inspired by the light and shadows of the festival. Through this, they developed a stronger sense of colour and form, while also discovering the beauty of Chinese celebrations. In Year 3, students designed poetic paper lanterns using lines, shapes and colours, combining images of the moon, rabbits, lanterns, and family with classical poetry to express their understanding of home and tradition.

Year 4 students explored traditional Chinese folk art techniques such as contrasting colours and exaggerated forms, producing lively Mid-Autumn refrigerator magnets that brought art into everyday life. Year 5 students cleverly incorporated festive imagery like mooncakes, rabbits, and lanterns into clock designs, assembling hands and numbers by themselves—embedding memory and culture into the design of time itself. Teachers noted the emotional investment and creative growth evident in each child’s work.

In Year 6, students explored the intangible cultural heritage of gold foil craft. Through studying the traditional process and artisan spirit behind the technique, they created elegant and detailed artworks that reflected both patience and precision. In Chinese lessons, they also hand-sewed herbal sachets, learning about Mid-Autumn fragrance traditions and infusing their creations with memories and meaning.

Every handmade piece was a conversation between children and culture. Every festive experience planted seeds of respect and love for tradition.

Lower School Head of Mandarin
Ms. Zhang
Immersive celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival on campus helps children understand the deeper meaning embedded in traditional festivals and strengthens their cultural identity. These multi-sensory experiences make abstract ideas about Chinese culture tangible and relatable, especially values such as family and belonging. Our diverse range of activities broke down cultural barriers and strengthened community connection – transforming our school from a cultural collection into a cultural ecosystem.

Upper School
Language Immersion
and Cultural Depth

At Harrow Beijing, we believe that deep cultural understanding is the wellspring of Chinese language proficiency. Whether in IGCSE reading and writing, or A-Level literary analysis, a strong grasp of cultural context is essential. With this in mind, our Chinese department designed a special Mid-Autumn programme titled “Verses of the Full Moon: A Celebration of Culture and Expression”, encouraging students to immerse themselves in tradition while refining their linguistic skills and deepening their appreciation of Chinese heritage.

Hard Pen Calligraphy by Students

Calligraphy & Composition: Students expressed their thoughts through ink, using brush or pen to write classic Mid-Autumn verses or original poems. Through the strokes of each character, they discovered the visual and structural beauty of Chinese writing.

Poetry Recitation: Working individually or in groups, students delivered dramatic recitations of classical Mid-Autumn texts, accompanied by background music. Their voices gave life to the rhythm and emotion of ancient literature.

In-Class Exploration: Teachers led in-depth lessons on Mid-Autumn mythology, customs, and literature, guiding students from close reading to deeper interpretation, and helping them connect language with emotion, knowledge with values.

Upper School Head of Mandarin
Ms. Li
For Harrow Beijing students, the Mid-Autumn Festival is far more than a holiday. In IGCSE, it becomes vivid writing material—”family memories” and “festive scenes” take shape as rich narrative content. In A Level classes, it becomes a profound literary context: when students read the solitude of Quiet Night Thoughts or the magnanimity of Prelude to Water Melody, they’re not just analysing texts, but feeling the emotional depth and philosophical spirit behind the words.

Culture is the soul of language. Experiencing Mid-Autumn firsthand offers the perfect real-life context for understanding culture, and serves as a vital bridge from “learning Chinese” to “thinking in Chinese.” This is one of the defining features of Harrow’s Chinese curriculum.

At Harrow Beijing, we believe the heart of education lies not only in knowledge, but in culture and expression. The Mid-Autumn Festival is more than a celebration – it is a rich, cross-disciplinary cultural experience that engages students from our youngest learners to our senior students.

From mooncake-making to poetry-writing, every activity reflects our commitment to nurturing cultural literacy, creative thinking, and meaningful expression. Through these experiences, our students are not only growing as learners, but also as culturally grounded, globally minded individuals.

May the moon
shine bright,
families reunite,
and culture flourish
in every heart.
Happy
Mid-Autumn Festival