The Cariboo's Chinese heritage will be front and centre at the Barkerville Historic Town and Park this Saturday when the annual Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is celebrated.
A fixture of Asian culture for more than 1,000 years, they are typically held in the middle of autumn when the moon is at its roundest and symbolizes family reunion and togetherness.
The celebration at Barkerville is a little earlier than most so it can be shared with the historic town’s summertime guests.
It will feature lion and dragon dances, lantern making workshops, a tea ceremony, a Chinatown trivia contest, moon cake tasting, celebratory banquets at the Lung Duck Tong restaurant,entertainment at the Theatre Royal in the evening and a parade of illuminated paper lanterns at dusk.
A new signboard for the Chinatown arch will be unveiled during the festival's opening ceremony. It reads "加利布唐番地," or “Colony of China in Cariboo." According to Dr. Ying Ying Chen, Director of Barkerville’s Chinatown interpretation program, documented archaeological research reveals that Chinese pioneers called the Chinatown they built in Barkerville “唐番地,” or “Colony of China.”
“This uniquely brave naming of Barkerville’s Chinatown as an official Chinese colony was unknown to contemporary European communities, and is equally unknown to modern Canadian communities,” said Dr, Chen. “That is, until the uncovering of artifacts by archaeologists in the early 1990s that we are finally able to fully recognize today.”
The Chee Kung Tong building, the oldest ethnic Chinese structure in Canada, was erected by the Hongmen, or Chinese Freemasons, in Barkerville to help Chinese miners adjust to the realities of living so far from home, and to act as a hospice of sorts for those community members in need. The Chee Kung Tong was declared a National Historic Site in 2009.
“This makes Barkerville a Provincial Heritage Property like no other,” said Stewart Cawood, Barkerville’s Production Manager. “In that we are also a National Historic Site of Canada with a second National Historic Site inside of it.”
Barkerville itself was declared a National Historic Site in 1924.
For more information visit www.barkerville.ca, or phone 1-888-994-3332. For information or reservations for Saturday’s Lung Duck Tong Mid-Autumn Banquet, call 1-250-994-3458.
