Mid-Autumn Festival and Moon Cake

The Chinese Moon Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar. It's also known as the Mid-autumn Festival. It is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival.

Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:

• Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
• Putting pomelo rinds on one's head
• Carrying brightly lit lanterns
• Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang'e
• Planting Mid-Autumn trees
• Collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members
• Lighting lanterns on towers
• Fire Dragon Dances

The Moon Festival starts from some legendary stories. Legend says that Chang Er flew to the moon, where she has lived ever since. You might see her dancing on the moon during the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is also an occasion for family reunions. When the full moon rises, families get together to watch the full moon, eat moon cakes, and sing moon poems. With the full moon, the legend, the family and the poems, you can't help thinking that this is really a perfect world. That is why the Chinese are so fond of the Moon Festival.

The Moon Festival is also a romantic one. A perfect night for the festival is if it is a quiet night without a silk of cloud and with a little mild breeze from the sea. Lovers spend such a romatic night together tasting the delicious moon cake with some wine while watching the full moon. Even for a couple who can't be together, they can still enjoy the night by watching the moon at the same time so it seems that they are together at that hour. A great number of poetry has been devoted to this romantic festival. Hope the Moon Festival will bring you happiness.

Mooncakes are Chinese pastry traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are rich, heavy, and dense compared with most Western cakes and pastries. They are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.

Modern mooncakes differ mainly from traditional types most vividly in the type of fillings that are offered. For instance, mooncakes containing taro paste and pineapple, which were considered novelty items at their time of invention have in recent years become commonplace items. In addition, ingredients such as coffee, chocolate, nuts (walnuts, mixed nuts, etc), fruits (prunes, pineapples, melons, etc), vegetables (sweet potatoes, etc), ham, and even lychees have been added to give a modern twist to the traditional recipes.

Source: Image, Moon Festival, Moon Cake