Not Just Another Pretty Face: 中秋节 [Mid-Autumn Festival]

Sunday, September 18, 2005

中秋节 [Mid-Autumn Festival]

夜思 by

李白

床前明月光, 疑是地上霜。

舉頭望明月, 低頭思故鄉。

"chuáng qián míng yuè, guāng, yí shì dì shàng shuāng
jÛ tóu wàng míng yuè, dī tóu sī gù xiāng"

Whenever Mid-Autumn festival rolls around, this poem, Ye Si, by Li Bai comes to mind. My parents taught it to me when I was a kid and I, being Chinese illterate memorized it by pin yin. I think it roughly translates into:

"By my bedside, there is a pool of moonlight, or is it frost?"
"I lift my head and gaze at the moon, I lower my head and think of home."

Mid-Autumn festival is usually a time for family, delicious mooncakes and tanglungs. This one for me was no different.

Ipoh was a bustling hub of outstation people who came back for the weekend festival.

The packed seafood restaurant near my house where my family went for dinner on Saturday night is good evidence of that. This place was packed till bursting at the seams! I understand why as it serves the best (and cheap as well) salted egg crab I've ever tasted! Even me, not being a big crab fan, had more than my fair share that night.

What was left of the cholesterol-laden salted egg crab

Even Ipoh Jusco was all decked out for the festivities. The mini 'centre court' with stalls selling mooncakes was decorated with tanglungs, fake bamboo plants and they even had a young girl performing on a violin. I thought her rendition of Jay Chou's Long Juan Feng [Tornado] was pretty good.

Ipoh Jusco, performing violonist at centre of pix

At my grandparent's house, after dinner on Saturday night, I experienced a mooncake encounter of 'the other kind'. There were so many new-fangled flavours eg, black sesame seed and mung bean which was one of the OK ones. The not so OK ones were longan and red dates (which I chose not to try after bad feedback) and mint with chocolate chips which tasted like toothpaste! Ugh, I may be a fan of mint in sweets or chocolates, but definitely not in mooncakes!

When it comes to mooncakes, I guess I'm pretty traditional- white lotus paste, red bean, even green tea are OK but not mocha, tiramisu and definitely not mint which is downright weird tasting! I am a big fan of salted eggs in mooncake though which some people hate, so I guess taste and preference is subjective. Hmmm...wonder what the dragon fruit mooncake tastes like?

I think it's part of the mooncake manufacturer's sales strategy to churn out all kinds of new flavours each year that people will buy because they are curious what it tastes like. I wonder what mooncakes will be around next year...