Dear Friends,

Happy Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, zhong qiu jie, a Chinese harvest festival all about family, food, love, lanterns, and most of all mooncakes that was this past Tuesday, September 21. Hope you had a chance to enjoy the beauty of the full moon, the largest full moon of the year. And congratulations to our friends at Stop AAPI Hate — Manjusha P. Kulkarni, Russell Jeung, and Cynthia Choi — for being named to Time's 100 most influential people of 2021. This is a busy week for us at the 1990 Institute with our podcast launching today and our webinar tomorrow on AAPI representation in media and entertainment. Scroll down to the Spotlight section to learn more about our new events and programs! Thanks for your continued support of the 1990 Institute and newsletter. Thanks also for forwarding this newsletter to your friends and family, and for encouraging your friends to subscribe so they can get this content straight to their inboxes too.

It’s not too late to register for tomorrow’s free webinar:
Unity Through Communication: What’s Next for AAPIs in Media and Entertainment

How can mooncakes bring us together?

By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Oh no! I forgot to buy mooncakes! 

I rushed out to my local Chinese grocery store last Saturday, flustered that I had forgotten this critical task until the last weekend before the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (this year on Tuesday, September 21, 2021). Usually, so close to the holiday, the shelves are bare and all that is left are a few lonely boxes, weird brands and lesser flavors.

I went straight to the mooncake section and found a lot of bare shelf space. But not completely sold out yet. And tucked into a corner, I spotted my favorite Sheng Kee Bakery mooncakes. Three boxes left. 

I was so relieved that I accidentally bought all three boxes.

My parents never celebrated the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival when I was growing up. But my kids and I had a lot of fun walking to the park with our little paper lanterns every year to look at the moon and eat mooncakes, as well as celebrating it with the Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Hong Kong, Vietnamese, and Korean American communities in our town. Once we even went to check out Oktoberfest since it’s the same harvest moon, but too much beer.

There are many stories surrounding the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, with the moon goddess Chang-e and the heavenly archer Hou-yi, Wu Gang the woodcutter forever chopping the Cassia tree, Vietnamese Chu Cuoi and his magical medicinal tree, and the jade rabbit pounding his elixir of immortality. 

But my favorite story is how during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), Chinese statesman Liu Po-Wen baked messages of revolt into mooncakes, which were then distributed to villagers and rebel forces, right under the noses of the Mongol soldiers. The Chinese people rose up together on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival and successfully overthrew their much-hated Mongol rulers.

There is so much that we can do when we know each other and work together.

Recently, Central York School District in York, Pennsylvania, banned or “froze” a long list of 300 books on race or social justice themes, including Grace Lin’s beautiful children’s picture book, “Big Mooncake for Little Star,” about a Chinese American girl who bakes a big mooncake with her mom and is supposed to wait but can’t resist a nibble. Other books center people of color such as Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks, Malala, James Baldwin, and the women in Hidden Figures. 

Students of different races are standing together to protest the ban, new people are running for school board, and people across the nation are donating the books to Little Free Libraries. For books. For community. For togetherness. For light. For a story about a Chinese American girl and her mooncake.

And after a year of this policy and weeks of protests, the ban or “freeze” on these books was lifted this week.

We’re co-presenting SFCAUSE’s virtual event tomorrow with Erika Moritsugu and community advocates!

Curated News

Post-9/11 surveillance has left a generation of Muslim Americans in a shadow of distrust and fear | PBS NewsHour  “A lot of our members were completely traumatized and disappeared, they were not even returning our phone calls because they were so scared, and I think it destroyed their morale, it destroyed everything they ever believed in.” 

On 9/11, Chinatown residents watched the towers fall. Some are still recovering. | NBC News  In the aftermath, language and cultural barriers hid the community’s emotional trauma.

Pain never ebbs for family of Betty Ong, flight attendant who made first 9/11 alert | NBC News  “People will call it an anniversary, a memorial, a tribute…To us, it’s just a continuation of 20 years of anguish.” 

Opinion: Hate killed my brother 4 days after 9/11. What has changed (and hasn't) 20 years later | AZ Central  We've taken steps forward and backward to address hate in the years after my brother, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered. But my ask remains the same. 

Former Joint Chiefs chair: Nothing unusual about Milley’s contacts with China | Politico  “Having communications with counterparts around the world is routine.”

Expert Interview: Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry on China’s Future in the Region Following U.S. Military Withdrawal | UC San Diego 21st Century China Center  "If I were a top leader in China, I would not necessarily conclude at all that what's happened in Afghanistan means that the United States is in a downward spiral."

China’s Tiangong astronauts return with vision of ‘new heights’ in space travel | South China Morning Post  Mission commander tells his crew ‘real gold fears no fire’ moments before their successful re-entry after 90 days in space. 

Emma Raducanu's shock U.S. Open win was more than a sporting fairy tale | NBC News  “There is more to Emma and every one of us than our ethnic heritage,” said one immigrant to the U.K.

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