Mid-Autumn Festival and Moon Cakes

Even though it's 90 degrees most of this week, China celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival this Thursday (Sept. 19).  Outside still screams "summer," but this annual holiday celebrates the end of the harvest.  Traditionally, it's celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese calendar, but it also coincides with the full moon, which is Sept. 19.

I asked my students yesterday what the holiday was about, and they said it's like Thanksgiving, a time when family and friends come together.  They also compared it to a reunion, a time to go visit parents and relatives.  Unfortunately, unless the students live close the their families, they said they wouldn't be going home this year.

The festival is also called the Moon or Moon Cake Festival because of its association with the full moon.  Brad and I wondered what all the pastries were in the store, each stamped with a red Chinese characters.  They were hundreds of them.  We discovered they are moon cakes, made especially for this festival time.  We bought a couple and they were good--flaky crust with a fig filling (like Fig Newtons).  We were at the store again and noticed a big line to buy cakes coming right out of the oven.  Why not?  We took them home and when we went to eat them, we realized the filling was pork!  Another in our long line of "is it sweet? or is it savory?' experiences.  They still tasted good, but not exactly the dessert we were hoping for.

Catherine's homemade moon cakes.(We already ate 3!)

Yesterday afternoon, my contact, Catherine (Cao Ning), in the Foreign Language Department, called and asked to meet me in the lobby of apartment.  She had something to give me.  I thought it might be more class lists for my classes that start next week.  I went to meet her, and much to my surprise, she had made moon cakes for us.  Beautifully presented in individual boxes, her homemade cakes didn't resemble the ones in the grocery store at all.  There were two varieties, one with Chinese characters, which Catherine said meant good fortune, and the other had a four-leaf clover, with a similar meaning.  One had an apricot filling and the other coconut.  They are delicious, and not likely to last until Thursday.  I'm going to be keeping my eyes open for those moon cake pans.

While we were sitting in a restaurant, we notice some young women sitting next to us who had a beautiful shopping bag from a bakery that clearly specializes in moon cakes.  I motioned to see if I could take a picture of the bag, and, in perfect English, one of the women said, "of course."  I really need to starting assuming that anyone under 30 will probably have some English skills.

Brad plans to ask the students in his class tonight where we should go Thursday for the best Mid-Autumn Festival celebration in Nanjing.  I'm sure it will include fireworks.  More to come.

Beautiful presentation!

The moon cake shopping bag.