Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Zhong Qiu jie kuai le! 中秋节快乐!

A moon cake with an egg yolk

Well; it is that wonderful time of year where I receive a ton of free food from the foreigner's who don't like the nasty Chinese food given out during holidays. There are certainly benefits of being willing to eat just about anything. In this case, it means I can get fat from eating moon cakes (yue bing 月饼).





Today is the Mid-Autumn festival. It is one of the bigger Chinese holidays. Everyone has the day off and is apparently partying it up somehow. During English corner (it is a place I go to speak English with people. On a corner), I asked people what the mid-Autumn festival is and what they do to celebrate it. Firstly, I am not sure I like the name. When I think of autumn, I think of fall. When I think of fall, I think of the transition from summer to winter and the color of leaves starting to change. Certainly does not seem like the middle of that happening. Maybe in Alaska. The Chinese people I asked weren't much help either. They basically said that this was the time of the year that the lady on the moon was the brightest. Sorry Chinese people; there is no lady on the moon... I am not sure what propaganda you are being fed, but clearly it is a man that is on the moon.

So when I asked what people do for the holiday, they said you can hang out with your family or your girlfriend and look at the moon. Since I don't have either here, it looks like I am out of luck for the only thing they suggested. There is one more thing though that people do for the mid-autumn festival. Eat moon cakes! This is something I have done, and will continue to do for zhong qiu jie! Chances are, this holiday may last a lot longer for me...

Let me explain moon cakes for just a bit.

Moon cakes remind me a lot of Mac products in that they come in exquisite packaging, are over priced,  and look absolutely gorgeous once you have unwrapped them. When you actually use the product though, it is nothing special. (Ha ha. Just kidding my Mac user friends. Your iPod/iTouch/iPhone/iPad/Powerbook IS special. And I am sure it was totally worth the money you (or your parents) paid for it.)

A lot of moon cakes

From the above picture, you can get an idea of how some of these moon cakes are packaged. They all come in a nice bag (you know; those bags that you get on your birthday or Christmas instead of wrapping paper that have been reused about 100 times). Once you take the box out of the bag, you will see a nice box or tin that contains your moon cakes.

A nice box of moon cakes.

This box of moon cakes contained six normal sized (individually boxed and packaged) moon cakes, and one giant moon cake. I have no idea how much something like this costs, but it if is more than one dollar, it is probably not worth it (sadly, I get the impression that these things end up being a bit expensive).

Moon cakes are fancy

As you should be able to tell from the above picture and what I have written, I have a lot of moon cakes and did not buy any of them. Turns out, Chinese people like to give foreigners moon cakes so they can celebrate the holiday. The problem with this is that most foreigners do not really like moon cakes. This means that by default, I get a lot of extra moon cakes! Yay. In fact, I even received a box of moon cakes that were a year old. Awesomely, year old moon cakes starts looking more and more like the real moon the older they get.

Year old moon cake

Take a look at this moon cake. It looks like a block of cheese! Just like the real moon. Incredible. (No mom; I didn't eat any of the year old moon cakes)

A moon cake

Most moon cakes however are not a year old and actually look quite delicious. The moon cakes are intricately designed and usually have some Chinese writing on it. The flavors of moon cakes are usually pretty unique. Some of the flavors I have had are red bean, date and sesame seed, coconut, brown mystery stuff flavor and yellow/green flavor. They have more unique flavors like fuzzy meat (think cotton candy, only meat) and red bean. Also, many moon cakes have a hard boiled egg yolk in the middle. It seems that I recall from Taiwan delicious moon cakes made of pineapple; sadly, I have yet to see anything like that here.

A moon cake with an egg yolk

Here is an image of a moon cake with an egg yolk in it. Yummy! I usually stop eating it when the yellow oils from the egg start dripping on my hands.

So there you have it! Since you are in America, you can celebrate mid-autumn festival by appreciating the fact that there are no moon cakes for you there that you have to eat. Since I am in China, I will celebrate the surplus of moon cakes that I have! Because who would not want something that is "deticlous loved by all. Produced by the best materal With most up-to-date equipments and technoque?!"

Deticlous!