Vietnam's Mid-Autumn Festival played out not just on the streets but on screens this year. From 23 to 25 September, the short-video platform Zalo Video ran a "Mid-Autumn Moments" campaign that pulled in hundreds of creators and produced thousands of festival-themed clips in just three days.
The content ranged widely. Some creators filmed city landmarks glowing with holiday decorations, while others went deep on tradition. Nguyen Toan, known online as Ton Lon Ton, visited Phu Binh lantern village in Ho Chi Minh City to film artisans shaping shimmering cellophane lanterns into fish, boats and rabbits — the nostalgic toys that generations of children in southern Vietnam have carried through the festival. His heritage videos drew tens of thousands of views, and he says the platform helps make folklore feel immediate for younger viewers while reviving childhood memories and family ties at harvest moon time.
Food was the other big draw. The creator behind Bep Ben Suon Doi posted a tutorial on thousand-layer mooncakes that racked up hundreds of thousands of views, pairing classic Vietnamese flavours with modern presentation. The appetite for this kind of content is real: Thu Huyen, a 27-year-old office worker in Ho Chi Minh City, told the platform she follows mooncake tutorials on her lunch breaks and baked traditional mooncakes from a video guide to share with colleagues.
Mid-Autumn Moments is part of a broader pattern at Zalo Video, which runs topical content series around major Vietnamese dates including National Day, Lunar New Year, the Vu Lan festival and Vietnamese Women's Day. The idea is to give digital storytellers a stage while celebrating the country's culture and people.
For travellers, the takeaway is less about the app itself and more about what it reveals: Mid-Autumn Festival (Tet Trung Thu), held on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month — usually mid-to-late September — is one of Vietnam's warmest and most photogenic celebrations. Streets fill with lantern stalls and lion dances, mooncake shops do brisk trade, and families gather in the evening with children carrying glowing lanterns. If you're in Vietnam around that time, Ho Chi Minh City's Cho Lon district and Hanoi's Old Quarter are among the liveliest places to see it up close, and a mooncake-tasting session is practically mandatory.
