This year the National Day coincided with the Mid‑Autumn Festival, and foreign friends in Hefei experienced the delicacy and warmth of a traditional Chinese holiday.

In the community canteen of Linxi Community in Hefei High‑Tech Zone, handmade lanterns hung in the windows and the air was filled with the sweet scents of flour and osmanthus — a Mid‑Autumn celebration where foreign friends and local residents together created a cross‑border feeling of reunion through their interactions.

When layers of flaky pastry, lotus seed paste and molds were spread out along the long table in the Linxi community canteen, Usman Ranaq from Pakistan was staring at the dough in his hands, repeatedly kneading it under the guidance of a community aunt.

Usman, a PhD student at the University of Science and Technology of China who arrived in Hefei in 2024, previously knew about the Mid‑Autumn Festival only from the poem lines about "looking up at the bright moon." Now his fingertips were touching the most vivid cultural symbols.

"You need to knead the dough until your fingerprint shows through for it to be soft enough," a community volunteer said as she guided him to press the flaky pastry into a round skin and wrap it around the dense lotus paste. Usman's palms are relatively large, and the mooncakes he first made kept splitting slightly at the seam. He tried again and again, nose almost touching the dough; his focused expression drew soft smiles from those around him.

After sprinkling sesame and putting them into the oven, a “ding” marked the moment the mooncake aroma rose. Holding a slightly browned mooncake, Usman said it made him think of his parents far away in Pakistan.

"Before making mooncakes I also made a lantern myself — want to see?" Usman led the reporter to the lantern‑making area and pointed to a lantern hanging by the window. He read aloud the words he had written on it: "May your family shine like the moon always." Then he picked up a marker and, stroke by stroke, wrote the same words below in his native language. As the pen traced the paper he said softly, "Last Mid‑Autumn I had just arrived in Hefei and everything was unfamiliar. This year, making the lantern with the uncles and aunties here and 'writing' my longing into it, I feel like my family is much closer."

Autumn sunlight streamed through the canteen windows, casting dappled light across Haleema Zia's hanfu.

Also from Pakistan and a PhD student at the University of Science and Technology of China, she adjusted a jade hairpin while her two‑and‑a‑half‑year‑old son hugged a jade rabbit toy and reached for the embroidered flowers on her skirt. "When our family came to Hefei in 2023 he was only four months old; now he can already point at a lantern and shout 'moon.'"

In the hanfu experience area, Haleema Zia changed into a cross‑collared, waist‑long ruqun dress. As a volunteer helped tie her sash, she recalled her first community tea‑culture event. "The tea master taught us how to warm cups and wake the tea; that slowed, deliberate rhythm made me feel the elegance of traditional Chinese culture." She happily told the reporter that her Chinese teacher had given her the Chinese name "Qi Ya (齐雅)."

At the lacquer‑fan workshop, Haleema's husband Kashif Ur Rehman followed the instructor to learn marbling lacquer. He picked his favorite colors, dripped paint onto the water's surface, tapped the paint layer as instructed, then vertically dipped a blank round fan into the water and slowly lifted it out. The pigments spread into a unique pattern on the fan. Kashif showed his handmade piece to the reporter: "Doesn't it look like a colorful mountain? It's very beautiful!"

Kashif said that Pakistan also has hand‑painting traditions, but painting with lacquer on water was a first for him. "The process of making the lacquer fan is like our family taking root in Hefei while still carrying marks of home."

"There's a Chinese line of poetry that says 'the moon is brightest over my hometown,' but today I learned that as long as you have warm people around you, the moon looks equally full everywhere," Haleema Zia said, holding her son and husband as the hems of her hanfu fluttered in the breeze. In that moment, people from different countries — drawn together by a lantern, a mooncake, and a lacquer fan — shared the same romantic sense of reunion on this autumn day in Hefei.

Source: Hefei Evening News