Barkerville will be celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on September 9th

August 28, 2023 (Barkerville, BC) – Barkerville Historic Town & Park is pleased to announce that its

23rd annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is happening on Saturday, September 9th. The festival

honours the Cariboo region’s Chinese community and includes festival-themed activities throughout

the day, evening entertainment at the Theatre Royal, and a lantern parade at dusk.

Mid-Autumn Moon festivals have been held in Asia for more than 1,000 years and they celebrate the

abundance of the harvest with traditional music, martial art displays, lantern building, and the tasting

of bean curd or lotus seed mooncakes shaped to reflect the harvest moon. According to ancient

Chinese astrology, the moon is at its roundest in the middle of the autumn season. Since the round

shape of the full moon symbolizes family reunion and togetherness in Chinese culture, one of the

preeminent festivals in the Chinese calendar is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

“This season’s festival is especially important as 2023 marks 100 years since the Canadian

government introduced the Chinese Immigration Act, commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion

Act,” says Dr. Ying Ying Chen, the coordinator for Barkerville’s Historic Chinatown programs. “From

1923 to 1947, Chinese immigration into Canada became illegal.”

In May of this year, Parks Canada Minister Steven Guilbeault announced the designation of the

exclusion of Chinese Immigrants as an event of national historic significance. The Act was part of a

long legacy of discrimination against Chinese people in Canada, including here in Barkerville. Directly

following the Head Tax, which forced Chinese immigrants to pay as much as $500 to enter Canada, the

Act intentionally disrupted family life by preventing Chinese men from visiting home or bringing

family here.

“Without descendants in Barkerville, the development of a flourishing Chinese community was

hampered,” adds Dr. Chen. “As mining slowed down in Barkerville, the Chinese community dispersed,

and in 1934, only sixty Chinese people remained.”

In remembrance of this history, Barkerville will be celebrating its Mid-Autumn Moon Festival a little

earlier than most to share this special day with the historic town’s summertime guests. This year’s

event will feature lion and dragon dances, lantern making workshops, trivia contests, mooncake

tasting, celebratory banquets at the Lung Duck Tong restaurant, and a spectacular parade of

illuminated paper lanterns that will fill the night with equal parts revelry and reverence for one of BC’s

oldest and largest ethnic communities.

For more information about Barkerville’s 2023 Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, please visit

www.barkerville.ca, or phone 1-888-994-3332. For information or reservations for the Lung Duck

Tong Mid-Autumn Banquet on September 9th, please call (250) 994-3458