Mid‑Autumn Festival celebrated with mooncakes and lanterns

The Mid-Autumn Festival, marked by mooncakes and family gatherings, is being observed across East Asia and in diaspora communities. In San José, Dzui’s Vietnamese dessert shop is selling bánh pía, a flaky, mooncake-like pastry filled with mung beans, salted egg yolk, candied winter melon and durian, that its owner Dzui Thai traces to his Teochew family’s four-decade recipe. Thai says in his hometown of Sóc Trăng people were more likely to eat bánh pía for the Moon Festival than traditional mooncakes, and his auntie’s factory would work almost nonstop each fall making thousands of the pastries. Dzui’s stamps its bánh pía with the Tân Hưng brand name with his family’s blessing, and Thai follows the same laborious seven-step process his relatives use. Online greetings and posts accompanying the holiday feature mooncakes, family moments, and harvest-moon imagery shared by people celebrating the festival.