Over the past couple of weeks I kept seeing advertisements for round cake-like treats (these images were literally everywhere: on the back of buses, centrefold spreads in newspapers and posters all over the MTR). I started to get curious and after a bit of research and asking around it turns out that these treats are mooncakes a Chinese delicacy that is typical to the Mid Autumn festival. These mooncakes are offered between friends and family in the lead-up to the festival.
According to Wikipedia the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese people, dating back over 3,000 years. The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eight month in the Chinese calendar, which is in September or early October (this year October 22nd). The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the others being Chinese New Year and Winter Solstice. Traditionally Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the moon, eat moon cakes and pomelos together. Accompanying the celebrations there are additional cultural customs such as: carrying brightly lit lanterns, burning incense, and fire dragon dances. More information about the festival can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival.
Mooncakes are generally round or rectangular, about the size of the palm of your hand. The moon cakes have a thin pasty like crust and are usually filled with lotus seed paste. In the centre you will often find a yolk from salted duck eggs (yuck!) to represent the moon. If you want to see how these mooncakses are make check out this link (http://www.sbs.com.au/food/foodart/182/Mooncakes). Since I don’t have any Chinese friends yet who will buy me one of these pastries, I set out to buy one for myself to see what all the fuss is about. As the label of my mooncake packaging was all in Chinese buying one of these cakes was a bit of a gamble. Back home I cut open the cake to find that mine (thankfully) didn’t contain a yolk but nuts of some sort. It actually tasted quite good but it was awfully sweet and only a small slice of the round cake was enough for me. Probably for the better as I later found out that these traditionally delicacies aren’t really the healthiest of snacks the with some mooncakes containing more than the recommended daily intake of sugar while others are large enough to supply one’s daily fat requirements (thankfully I only had a small slice and didn’t finish the whole thing!).
Having enjoyed the new experience of tasting the mooncakes we got into the Mid-Autumn Festival spirit and ventured out to Causeway Bay to have a look at the Lantern Festival. The lanterns were very impressive with lanterns in all shapes and sizes (see pictures below).
What an amazing festvial. I might leave the moon cake eating up to the locals but the lanterns were definitely a highlight!
Happy mid-Autumn Festival!
Annelotte
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