Mooncakes

This past Wednesday was a holiday in China known as the Mid Autumn Festival. Red Chinese lanterns were hung around our complex as decorations for the holiday. Dangling from the trees, they lit up at night and cast a soft red glow through the palm leaves. They are were only around for a few days, but they gave us a glimpse into what it must be like to celebrate Chinese New Year here.

Last Friday evening there was a DJ set up in the middle of the complex, in an area we like to refer to as "the circle". It's centrally located among the 9 high rise buildings of the complex, and different colored bricks on the ground define a circle pattern that looks like a bulls eye from above. A balloon arch surrounded the circle and a dancing yellow tiger shook hands with kids and held babies for photo ops (he was really a young Chinese boy in a costume resembling a cartoon version of a high school tiger mascot).

We think this was in honor of the Mid Autumn Festival celebration, but we couldn't read the banners hanging from the trees or ask the Chinese people around us what was going on. It didn't matter though, as we felt welcome. Volunteers passed out candy and glow sticks to Dean and the kids dancing around us. We stood for about 20 minutes listening to Chinese music – or rather, tunes that sounded familiar, with all the words in Mandarin. We heard a rendition of “Flying Purple People Eater” as we were leaving. I sang along in English and hummed the parts I didn't know. It was one of those moments where Matt and I look at each other in amazement and laugh about how surreal it is we live in China.

Like the Dragon Boat Festival we celebrated in May, the Mid Autumn Festival has a special food associated with it: mooncakes. It’s a tradition to enjoy this food with tea while gathered together with family. On a clear night, you marvel together at the fullness of the moon in late September.

I had a tough time describing what a mooncake is to my mom on Skype earlier this week, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here's a pretty accurate description I pulled from the definition they give: 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.

Wikipedia failed to mention how disgusting they taste.

To give you a feeling for what they taste like, here’s my idea of how to make a mooncake: Boil an egg for an hour so the yolk in the center is really firm. Discard white part of egg. Mash up some leftover kidney beans from dinner. Roll the yolk in salt, then cover the egg yolk with the mashed bean mixture. Make a pie crust without any sugar, and wrap it around the bean mixture. Use a carved wood block stamp to make a beautiful impression in the top of the “cake” to fool innocent people into thinking it must taste wonderful because it looks so pretty. Add preservatives, and insert into an even prettier box decorated with metallic accents, glitter, and lyrical poetry. Pass your gift to the unsuspecting victim and marvel at the speed with which they spit it into the trashcan.

I’m exaggerating, but really, who puts a salted duck egg in a pastry?! Where’s the chocolate pudding, jelly, or Bavarian creme version? Or marshmallows? Give me a moon pie over a moon cake any day of the week.

Fortunately, not all mooncakes contain the egg. I tried 5 different kinds, and only one was edible to me. It was a fruit-filled version which Dean quickly claimed.

We wanted to buy a box of mooncakes for Dean’s Ayi, so I went to the local grocery store and was amazed at how many different options there were. There are so many brands to choose from. The packages range from cardboard boxes to tins and even elegant carved wood boxes, but all look beautiful and inviting, like the giftable Christmas food aisle at Target in December. I picked a red tin with pretty embossed pink flowers on the front. Hopefully the cakes inside were good.

I wish I'd had my camera on me to take pictures of the grocery store displays. By the time I finished picking out a box, I started wondering if you could judge how bad a mooncake would taste based on how elegant and elaborate the package is. Do they make up for terrible tasting cakes with over-the-top packaging filled with glitter, glitz, and holographic bling?

The Plaid Far East office was closed three days in observance of the holiday, Wed-Fri. This sounds great, but we all worked last Sunday and today and tomorrow. So you lose a weekend and a half, but you get three days off in a row.

Fortunately, there is another holiday coming up next week that lasts from October 1 – 7. The office is closed during this time as well, but we will work weekends to make up for 2 of the weekdays.

In the end I get 4 vacation days out of the mix. Sounds wonderful and I am not complaining, but I will not have Thanksgiving or Christmas off of work. Or at least, not unless I take them as vacation days, since these are not celebrated in Shenzhen. It's kind of like we're celebrating the holidays early this year.

I’m told there will be some Christmas decorations up at the local mall or some stores in December, but if we want to see anything done up the traditional way, we’ll have to head to Hong Kong. I’m really hoping we can find Asian Santa. Dean can’t miss out on having his photo taken with Santa Claus! I've already started searching on the internet in my spare time, but no luck tracking him down yet, except as a guest celebrity at Hong Kong Disney. I'll be sure to post more details when I track Asian Santa down.