It’s that time of the year again, when the moon is round and people exchange mooncakes. It’s Mid-autumn Festival! Some call it the Mooncake Festival. Mid-autumn festival is celebrated by Chinese communities across the world. Singapore, having a very significant Chinese population, is not exception. This year, hotels and malls all celebrate this festival by decorating for the occasion and, of course, selling mooncakes!
Mid-autumn festival, as the name implies, marks the middle of the autumn season. It falls on the 15 day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. Like the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year, it is also a significant holiday in countries with significant Chinese populations. In fact, it is a public holiday in China and Hong Kong. Traditionally, it marks the end of the harvest season, where family members will gather and admire the full moon, which is supposedly at its roundest. Afterwhich, they would eat, what else, mooncakes 月饼!
These days mooncakes come in all shapes and sizes, the most common ones are the traditional ones. These little cakes are baked with a filling of lotus paste or bean paste. For variety, salted duck egg yolk are added to the mix, giving the mooncake a delicious flavour. Not content with just one egg yolk, these days, two and four egg yolks are quite common. It is also amazing to see how much these moon cakes increase in price relative to the number of yolks they have. Quite frankly, it is insane people would buy them at that kind of price. How much does a yolk actually cost?! Then again, it is a holiday, people don’t seem to mind to splurge a little bit this time of the year.
Even fancier mooncakes are the snow skin mooncakes 冰皮月饼. As the name implies, these babies are chilled, not baked, and are filled with practically anything these days. One of the pioneers is Raffles Hotel with their champagne truffle snow skin mooncake. Followed by the rest of the world. Actually, if it weren’t for the design on the mooncake, I wouldn’t call them mooncake at all! Personally though, I would still prefer the traditional one, with yolk, of course!
Chinese Legend says that Chang-e 嫦娥 flew to the moon after taking an immortality pill. While everyone knows that there is a rabbit on the moon. Chang-e actually met the rabbit on the moon. During the Mid-Autumn Festival Change-e and her husband Houyi 后羿 (a famous archer said to have shot down nine suns) meet after their year long separation. I don’t think they eat mooncakes to celebrate though. Anyway, while the west refers to the man on the moon, the Chinese refer have their woman on the moon.
A more realistic story is that mooncakes were used by the Ming 明 rebels to overthrow their Yuan 元 rulers. They hid messages in the mooncakes to communicate with everyone else. I guess this is how things work before the Internet. Obviously the mooncake is deeply entrenched in Chinese culture. And this tradition is already being exported out to the rest of the world. Just like the west loves to give gifts during Christmas, the Chinese give mooncakes to the people they care about.
In Singapore, malls and tourist spots and decorated with Mid-Autumn festival decorations with lanterns along the Singapore River, it does make a pretty sight. The lanterns here are figures made to resemble characters from the stories about Mid-Autumn Festival like Chang-e and Houyi. There is also a lantern pagoda. Literally a latern shaped like a pagoda. Beside it are laterns of the animals of the Chinese zodiac.
The streets are very bright these days. However, it will be over soon. And I’m already sick of eating mooncakes (already had one while writing this post). Well, might as well enjoy it while it lasts. Just let me go get another slice.
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