This years moon festival is fast approaching. Moon festival, or Mid Autumn festival is one of the most important holidays on the Chinese calender. It falls on the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calender, which typically equates to mid to late september on the gregorian calender. This year it falls on September 25. This is when the full moon is said to be at it's biggest and brightest of the year. Taiwanese typically celebrate by eating mooncakes, small pastry buns about 5 to 10 cm in daimeter with heavy fillings of things like lotus paste or red bean paste, the expensive ones having a centre of salted chicken or duck yolk, so that when the cake is sliced it looks like there is a "moon" inside. Mooncakes are considered a delicacy, and at this time of year many shops pop up selling moonkakes, some of them extremely expensive.
Another way people celebrate here is to cook barbeques outdoors, although that often means crouching on the footpath outside ones house or shop, around a small brazier cooking up a few morsals of meat. It's quite comical watching some peoples hopeless efforts at trying to get a bit of charcoal burning. I shouldn't laugh really. You are also supposed to gaze at the moon in a respectful manner.
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3 comments:
I love moon cakes, though I don't really know why.
They are a very curious taste for an Australian (which I am), especially the ones with yellow beans in the middle.
Xu Xu, I'd like to see a photo of one of those bbqs, if you have the time and means :-)
No worries, I'll try and take a few shots on Tuesday night. Might take a few days to get them posted, I need to visit a mate on the other side of town who has a computer with an english operating system. I'm using internet cafe's at the mo' and everything's in Chinese so a bit hard to figure out.
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