My Hong Kong | Meddling with mooncakes is a sign that we have forgotten the essence of the 3,000-year-old Mid-Autumn Festival
- Durian, beef Wellington, caviar – mooncake flavours get more extreme every year, but what’s wrong with the originals?
- The Mid-Autumn festival dates back thousands of years; why do we feel the need to modernise it?
The Mid-Autumn Festival is less than two weeks away and the Post’s office is already abuzz with anticipation.
Every year, the festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese calendar; this is when the moon is at its brightest. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the lunar calendar, this year the celebrations commence on September 21.
As journalists, especially those whose work is closely related to the culinary and hospitality sector, we often receive festive freebies during Mid-Autumn, Christmas and the Lunar New Year.
A few years ago, when I was editing the now-defunct HK Magazine, which was a subsidiary of this newspaper, I received more than 20 boxes of mooncakes in the run-up to the festival. Not only did they come with different fillings, but they also varied in their shape, size and packaging.
In the end, I managed to “redirect” these boxes to my colleagues, security guards at the office and at my residential complex; I only kept one box for myself.
