The mid-Autumn Mooncake: A slice of Spring and Nostalgia
Yesterday, we celebrated the mid-Autumn festival, or the Moon Festival, as it’s alternatively called. One particular cake heralds the arrival of this sacred holiday and it is the much-celebrated mooncake. Enjoyed predominantly by South-East Asian cultures, it’s a cake that often floods our local Asian groceries, our homes and even our social media platforms. Traditionally filled with red/white lotus paste and a salted duck egg yolk, the mooncake has evolved to include various fillings such as custard, green tea, black sesame and in some interesting occurrences, black truffle. What was once a known product only amongst people in my culture is fast becoming more mainstream with the advancement of social media. With it, I hope the joys and memories of eating one can transcend through too.
The mid-Autumn Festival/Moon Festival originated in China but has since seen its influence spread throughout South-East Asia. Traditionally known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, the holiday celebrates the harvest period and is touted as a time in the year for the people to celebrate their hard work and be thankful for the abundance the harvest provides. For myself, learning more about this festival has been quite unique as it occurs in Spring for us Australians being located in the Southern hemisphere. Despite occurring at opposite ends of the season, the feelings of celebration and gratitude remain very much the same. At this time of year, I’ve found it signals the warmer days of Spring and personally, brings fond memories; going outdoors with friends, seeing the flowers blossom, attending the Moon Festival celebrations in Cabramatta, and eating mooncakes.
As a child, one of my favourite memories would involve opening the endless boxes of mooncakes delivered by our relatives/family friends and eating them at our table after dinner – usually accompanied by some hot but soothing tea. Squeezed in somewhere would be attending the moon festival event at Cabramatta that was filled with mouth-watering food stalls, exhilarating rides, rip-off games and the infamous ‘foam wars’ (running and spraying shaving foam at each other).
This year brings a different feeling towards my usual enthusiasm for the moon festival. Sydney is currently under lockdown leaving many of our lives in varying manners of disarray. As a result, we’ve spent this year’s mid-Autumn Festival indoors with the heavy effects of the lockdown preceding it. There will be no moon festival event and the usual tradition of us visiting family/friends to deliver mooncakes did not happen this year. However, to our society’s credit, the persistence to celebrate the festival still lives on. My social media pages are still filled with posts relating to the Mid-Autumn Festival ranging from best wishes to mooncake photoshoots. All of which really warms the heart as it displays a warming resilience to the negative confines in which we find ourselves.
I ate a few slices with my mum yesterday and I think it held a very important reminder of the joys of tradition, and celebrating a unique culture that brings us so many holidays and reasons to celebrate. Despite being war refugees and enduring so much hardship, like many others, my parents brought over a tradition and legacy that brings so much joy to me and many others even in times where a pandemic is all we ever talk about. It’s an act that’s simple yet cannot be understated in its significance to our development and drive as a diverse society.
Mooncakes have been present throughout my childhood growing up and I think I’ve only grown to appreciate these symbolic cakes more as I’ve grown older. Every box gifted, every personal mooncake made, and every moment savoured lives on through our memories of these cakes and that collection will only grow larger as time goes by. Whilst the celebrations aren’t as grand this year, one thing we can be thankful for with every slice of mooncake is the warm memories it brings us and the hopes of what memories they will form for us in the future.
So, whoever is reading this, wherever you are, I hope you’re enjoying your slice of mooncake as much as I am and I hope better times come ahead for you as they will for many of us. One of our greatest gifts as people is perseverance and I think I understood that a little more deeply this year. What is your favourite memory of the mooncake? If you’re someone who doesn’t celebrate the mid-Autumn festival, which holiday and food do you hold dear in your memory?
Header photo image credit: Michelle Wang