MIDDLEBURGH

The Mid Autumn Festival

aka the Moon or Mooncake Festival. Coinciding with the Autumn Equinox when the moon is at its fullest and brightest it is basically a harvest festival originally associated with moon worship and subsequently with the folk story of Chang'e ...and the jade bunny.

Since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) is is also the occasion when people inflict small round moon cakes on the their "nearest and dearest". Bearing a superficial resemblance to pork pies, a traditional Moon cake has a heavy rich filling of either lotus seed or red bean paste mixed with oil (and egg yolk). Frankly not to my taste but then I adore pickled herrings. Manufacturers such as Maxims of HK have recently developed non-traditional varieties of mooncakes to appeal to a wider,younger and more health concious market.

Hong Kong is particularly famous for the quality of its mooncakes, so much so that they are much sought after in Shenzhen being carried back like Viking booty into China by returnees. I believe there are two factors influencing this flow of goods.

• In 2001 a chinese TV station exposed the fact that Nanjing Guanshengyuan, a prestigeous mainland food company of 63 years standing had been reprocessing ingredients from previous years production was then widespread in China (and HK??) I seem to remember a similar scandal in the UK where unscrupulous cake manufacturers did same thing reicing last years Christmas cakes. HK food standards are generally regarded as higher than in China and the reputable companies here go to great lengths to publicize their independent quality certification. (interestingly cosmetic standards are higher in China as japans SK-II recently discovered),
• In June of this year,Chinese regulations came into effect which control the value of "packaging" and the average space between mooncakes in a box. The intent is not some much environmental, but to ban "accessories" in mooncake boxes to prevent extravagance and corruption. An extreme case was a "moon cake gift box" containing cakes and the property deed for a small apartment sold at 310,000 yuan (US$38,200) in 2003 in Shanghai. Under the one country 2 systems policy HK Moon Cakes boxes (in HK) are subject to HK regulations.

This is not to say that there are not issues with HK Moon cake containers specifically the tins. The tins are extremely decorative and in the future will no doubt be collectors items appearing on the chinese version of the "antiques road show" with experts waxing lyrically about the designs in same way that they do over willow pattern plates.

In the mean time however local environmental activists in addition to protecting our threatened local dophins (Indo-Pacific hump-backed dolphins (Sousa chinensis) and finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides)) are actively galvanizing ... appropropriate word... the local population into Moon Cake Tin recycling programs. Apparently HK residents throw away more than three million mooncake tins annually.

Posted at 10/06/2006 07:47:00 am by David Middleburgh   Permalink

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