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It’s Mid-Autumn festival in China, meaning, our first Monday off of the school year.
Actually, it’s a big deal. Mid-Autumn Festival is the “Chinese Thanksgiving” or harvest festival, also known as the Moon Festival.
But instead of turkeys, giblets and pumpkin pies, Moon Day is celebrated by eating moon cakes, which should not be confused with moon pies or space cakes.
What are moon cakes?
I’ve eaten my fair share and they’re still a gastronomic mystery. Moon cakes are round like a full moon but filled with everything but green cheese.
Tasty innards include sweetened pork, rose petals, red beans and dried fruits. There there is one I call the salmonella special. It contains four egg yolks, representing the four phases of the moon. Not one mooncake contains a fudge filling, a caramel nougat center, double stuff or dingdong cream.
Some mooncakes have ornate designs pressed into them. Others shed their flaky pastry skin like a snake.
Mooncake packaging can be better than the cake itself. They are packaged in ornate gold filled boxes which are filled with smaller ornate boxes which are filled with yet more moon packaging—sort of like those Russian Dolls. The gift box can be larger than what is allowed for a flight carry-on and I could only imagine the nightmare it would cause with security. Is a petrified lard puck with pork innards a legal weapon?
While the Moon Festival started as a harvest festival to visit one’s family, the new way of celebrating has its own unique traditions. It starts with stampeding into Carrefour or Wal-mart to the Moon cake display, where several sample ladies dressed in ethnic costumes invite you to sample their delicacies. There are more moon displays lining the streets, similar to firework tents. But this time the fireworks happen on the way out of your body, if you dare eat one filled with lotus seeds.
Then, there’s a mass exodus out of Kunming the Friday after work before Moon Monday, turning packed busses into sardine cans on wheels. Traffic will be gridlocked ‘til late evening giving everyone a chance to look at the glowing orb in the autumn evening sky.
