Well, we just celebrated Mid-Autumn festival, so it was actually “moon cake time” (I was just dreaming about Moon Pies…). As the holiday approached, moon cake stands began popping up all over town, along almost every street:
In front of our apartment:
In front of Wal-Mart:
Basically, everywhere:
This year, there has been a major reduction in the giving of extravagant gift sets, with more moon cakes being sold individually (both options here in front of our local store):
I don’t think that we’ve ever actually bought any moon cakes since we tend to receive more as gifts than we can eat (“it is more blessed to give…”). Here is an assortment of some of the moon cakes we received this year:
Every part of the country has its own unique style of moon cake. In Kunming, it is smooth on the outside and filled with chopped, spiced ham on the inside:
Susan cut up some of our moon cakes and served them to a group of students last week:
There is a broad perspective of opinions about moon cakes among our students. Some love them (one girl eats more than 20 each year) while others don’t eat any. We did our own taste test and ranked them from worst (on the left) to better (on the right):
Although our opinions weren’t entirely consistent, we did agree that we preferred the nutty one the most. Which is interesting, because our students said that most Chinese people dislike that kind the most! I can only imagine where they might rank the humble moon pie…
i miss the moon cakes, in a weird sort of way….