What is that thing??
Nearly every store we find here sells little individual-sized cakes, called Moon Cakes. Picture a little pound cake with filling on the middle, and a pretty design on the top. The cakes come in small, bright-colored boxes and are totally overpriced compared to everything else here. We decided to try one out, only to discover that the filling we chose was egg flavored. Yes, imagine eating a yummy, soft pound cake with a hard boiled egg yoke in the middle. Very interesting…….
posted by Lee Hoffman at 8:27 PM
1 Comments:
Just to add a bit of information about these...
Currently they are in the Moon Festival/Autumn festival. The egg yoke is supposed to represent the moon in these cakes. I agree it is gross. They have new ones, if you can try to find one with yam paste in it, however, be careful because there are some that are worse than the one you just had. They have durion paste in them and in my opinion are really gross.
Here's a little history of the moon festival.
On the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, the moon is round and the Chinese people mark their Moon (or Mid-autumn) Festival. The round shape to a Chinese means family reunion. Therefore the Moon Festival is a holiday for members of a family to get together wherever it is possible.
On that day sons and daughters will bring their family members back to their parents' house for a reunion. Sometimes people who have already settled overseas will come back to visit their parents on that day.
As every Chinese holiday is accompanied by some sort of special food. On the Moon Festival, people eat moon cakes, a kind of cookie with fillings of sugar, fat, sesame, walnut, the yoke of preserved eggs, ham or other material. In Chinese fairy tales, there live on the moon the fairy Chang E, a wood cutter named Wu Gang and a jade rabbit which is Chang E's pet. In the old days, people paid respect to the fairy Chang E and her pet the jade rabbit.
The custom of paying homage to the fairy and rabbit is gone, but the moon cakes are showing improvement every year. There are hundreds of varieties of moon cakes on sale a month before the arrival of the Moon Festival this year. Some moon cakes are of very high quality and very delicious. An overseas tourist is advised not to miss it if he or she happens to be in China during the Moon Festival.
12:24 PM
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