It's Mooncake time!
For the last few weeks the shops have been selling lanterns and moon cakes and lantern displays have been set up at many venues throughout the island. At work Papa T has been given gifts of mooncakes some in beautiful boxes, sadly only a few of these have found their way home!
This is in aid of the Mid-Autumn festival, a traditional Chinese festival which celebrates the end of the autumn harvest and traditionally a time to thank the gods. It is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese Han calendar on the night of the full moon, so this year that's on the night of the 16th Sept
Making and sharing mooncakes is one of the hallmark traditions of this festival. In Chinese culture, a round shape symbolizes completeness and reunion. Mooncakes are made from lotus bean paste and other different ingredients such as whole egg yolks (these may be salted, single or double yolk), macadamia nuts, orange or durian, such as the ones below
In Vivo City shopping mall on Saturday there was a 'market' area with different stalls selling mooncakes and other traditional foods, many stalls gave out samples for tasting and we tasted lots of different things
however I politely declined to try these snacks- crispy salted egg fish skins!
The traditional moon cake below; made of lotus bean paste and typically has an egg yolk in the centre...
...we were told is becoming less popular as people now choose the 'snow skin' variety. These non-baked mooncakes, with a glutinous rice crust and fruit filling, was developed by a bakery in Hong Kong as a less sugary and fat laden alternative. I suspect that the addition of chocolate rather defeats the object!
Traditional or Snow Skin variety they are all rather beautiful to look at
The other tradition associated with the Mid Autumn Festival is that of displaying or carrying brightly lit lanterns and later that evening we wandered through China Town which was looking very festive
Stalls were selling pretty paper lanterns
There were also unfortunately some rather tacky battery operated plastic lanterns in the shape of animals, princesses and cars.
We saw this Chinese stilt walker who was handing out gifts from his golden bowl
I thought that the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple looked particularly pretty with its lovely red lanterns
It is a real pleasure and privilege seeing and learning more about the local traditions and festivals. I look forward to whatever comes next, I think it will be Divali, also known as the festival of lights, an ancient hindu festival so Little India will be the place to go for that
