The community hosted its 27th annual Mid-Autumn Festival, featuring live performances, vendors, and family-friendly activities.
By Beccah Hendrickson via 
Saturday, September 17, 2022
“It’s really exciting for us to be back on the street in Chinatown, back as we were in 2019,” said a volunteer.
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — For the first time since the start of the pandemic, a celebration unlike anything else return to Philadelphia’s Chinatown.
The community hosted its 27th annual Mid-Autumn Festival, featuring live performances, vendors, and family-friendly activities.
“The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated in China and other Southeast Asian countries and it’s a time to celebrate families, being together, centered around the harvest moon, when the moon is the fullest,” said Jenny Chen, a volunteer with Asian Americans United, who organized the festival.
The festival had been virtual in 2020 and scaled back last year for safety reasons.
“A lot of folks were expressing they were homesick from not being with their families, not being able to celebrate this holiday, so we took action,” said Alice Vuong, the board president of Asian Americans United.
Organizers say it was vital to the community to bring back the festival to its full scale.
“People were really missing out. They were saying they spent time with their grandma, grandpa, father here to watch performances and spend time with them,” said Vuong.
“It’s really exciting for us to be back on the street in Chinatown, back as we were in 2019,” said Chen.
Part of this year’s festival also encouraged political activism with a get-out-the-vote booth where volunteers are registering voters and teaching them about the issues.
“Really to celebrate, paint Chinatown as our space, as our community, and really show off how important immigrant communities and neighborhoods are,” said Vuong.
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