You Can Have Your Mooncake…

Another Mid-Autumn Festival has come and gone, and unfortunately rain over most of China prevented moon gazers from catching the moon at its brightest. Despite the weather keeping many indoors, all was not lost, as this was China first 3-day Mid-Autumn holiday weekend. Most importantly, eating mooncakes is a rain or shine tradition, and rainy weather keeping me in front of the TV probably only made me want to eat more mooncakes.



There seem to be more and more flavors of mooncakes every year: lotus seed, red bean, fruit, date, green tea, egg yolk, all kinds of meat, pineapple, hami melon, dried shrimp, yoghurt... They also have coffee, chocolate and ice cream flavors. Even Starbucks has gotten on the bandwagon with tiramisu, hazelnut latte, berry and cheese, and green tea mooncakes.

Despite all these flavors, there is only so much one can do to a mooncake. What I find even more interesting than all the flavors is some of the packaging they use for the treats. Since mooncakes are given as gifts, packaging is important. My favorite this year was the Audi mooncake gift box. Too bad there is no key to an R8 in the box, although in 2007 there was a 310,000rmb mooncake set that came with a key to a new apartment.



The overly-extravagant packaging, with watches and jade figurines, seems to have waned in popularity this year, and the emphasis is now on creativity. Ganso has a 3-tier mooncake package that is nice. Another store had a cylindrical carton that opened up to display a similar multi-tier style. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next year.

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Posted at 02:57PM Sep 18, 2008 by admin in Laowai Talk  |  Comments[1]