Children learn to make mooncakes to celebrate the Festival. [Photo by Tang Yan, Tang Yue]
The 15th day of the eighth lunar month is China's Mid-Autumn Festival, a celebration of the full moon. This year's Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Sep 21.
Since ancient times, it has been customary for the Chinese to reunite with family members and eat sweet mooncakes while gazing at the beautiful full moon on Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Mythology of Chang'e
The Chinese people's celebration of the full moon has its origins in the myth of Chang'e, the moon goddess.
According to legend, in ancient times, there were ten suns in the sky. The extremely hot temperature made people's lives miserable. A hero, Houyi the archer, shot down nine suns. To reward his bravery, the gods gave him an elixir. Chang'e, Houyi's wife, drank the elixir by accident and became immortal. Since immortals could not remain in the realm of mortals, she had to leave the earth and fly to the moon, watching the human world from afar.
China's Lunar Exploration Program, the "Chang'e Project", is named after the goddess. In 2019, the Chang'e 4 Lander touched down successfully on the moon, sending back the world's first close-range image of the dark side of the moon.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most important Chinese festivals symbolizing reunion. The roundness of the full moon represents people's desire for a happy, undivided family.
The 'Mooncake War' Begins
Eating mooncakes is an important custom of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Different parts of China have widely varying diets and therefore countless mooncake flavors. Traditional fillings include nuts and seeds, salted egg yolk, jujube paste, and bean paste. Now, there are modern flavors such as ice cream and durian.
This year, a number of museums across the country have introduced mooncakes that incorporate traditional Chinese visual elements in their design.
At a Haagen-Dazs store in Yinzhou, a large display advertises ice cream mooncakes that the brand created in collaboration with the Louvre Museum.
"We launched seven collaboration mooncakes with Louvre Museum this year, priced at 288 to 998 yuan. The mooncakes are crispy ice-cream sandwiches with flavors including vanilla, toffee, and berry. Each one features a piece of artwork from the Louvre, such as the Mona Lisa. They are popular with young consumers," the shop staff said.
In the meanwhile, Pizza Hut teamed up with the Summer Palace in Beijing to launch mooncakes that cleverly integrate iconic design elements from the Palace.
This year, Sanxingdui Museum, Shanghai Museum, National Museum, Suzhou Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other cultural institutions are collaborating with restaurant franchises, hotels, and food brands to launch museum-themed mooncake gift boxes, which have proven successful with young shoppers.
"I haven't bought mooncakes for many years. This year's creative museum-collaboration mooncakes all appear to be of high quality and look appealing. I'm going to buy one for a try," Ms. Lin said, "As long as they taste good! "
Although the flavors of mooncake are evolving, the symbolic meaning of the full moon remains unchanged, as will the Chinese custom of eating mooncake and reuniting with family during the Festival.
Fruit Boxes Sell Well
Just like mooncake sets, fruit boxes are also popular Mid-Autumn Festival gifts.
Autumn weather is dry, thus pears, apples, pomelos, and other water-rich fruits are favored by people. A popular pear variety of this season is the qiuyue (autumn moon), which has high water content and is round in shape, like the full moon. A box of eight sells for 70 yuan.
Chinese people often make sweet pear soup by boiling pear slices with rock sugar. It is believed that the soup could repel "heat" from the body and cure phlegmy coughs.
In a large fruit retail chain in Ningbo, the counters were piled high with apples, pears, grapes, pomegranates, persimmon, and other seasonal fruits, attracting many eager shoppers.
"Mid-Autumn Festival is coming. Fruits are in great demand. People buy them for home consumption and also as gifts. We have received many orders for gift-packaged fruit boxes," Ms. Chen, the owner of the fruit chain, said, "A lot of my regular customers drove over to our store and filled their trunks with fruits boxes."
The pitaya is a widely-consumed fruit in China. Common varieties either have red flesh or white flesh. But with the rise of new breeding techniques, yellow-flesh pitayas, such as "bird's nest fruit", are appearing on the market. Their flesh is sweet in taste and silky in texture. Look for them in Ningbo's fruit stores around Mid-Autumn Festival, but be warned—the price is not low!
Expensive fruit boxes are many people's first-choice gifts when visiting family and friends during the Festival. According to some dealers, in the run-up to the Festival, the most popular types of fruit boxes are 100-300 yuan in price, with 100-yuan boxes selling the best. Consumers like to personally choose the types of fruits that go into the boxes, adding a personal touch to their seasonal presents.
By Dong Na