To be honest, I have to google to see if there is anything special about this holiday. No, not much. The Wikipedia page in English is surprisingly long. The Chinese version is much shorter.
In summary, the tradition to honour the moon god started a long time ago, about 2500 BC. Later, in Tang dynasty (around 600-900 AD), the emperors used the day to award his government assistants. The date is the 15th day of the 8th month in the lunar calendar (the calendar that tells when lunar new year starts, which was the topic of our Newsletter 37).
Since it is also the time of the year when fruits and crops are being harvested and abundant, a tradition of getting the family together and feast on the harvest started forming in the society.
During the Tang Dynasty, according to Wikipedia, a business man from Xinjiang offered a cake to the emperor, who called the cake “hu cake”. “Hu” is what Han calls ethnic minorities in the north west region. Obviously Han never made cake like that, so it makes sense that the mooncake came from Xinjiang. The Emperor seemed like it and the cake got spread among ordinary people. Now we call it Mooncake.
Accounts of the origin of the mooncake vary: one particularly patriotic legend has it that during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), Han revolutionaries smuggled messages inside mooncakes to orchestrate an uprising against Mongolian rule. There is, however, little evidence to support this claim.
According to this Guardian article: Mooncake madness: China cracks down on extravagant versions of festival staple, the giving of mooncakes en masse began in the mid 20th century in Hong Kong, and spread to mainland China.
Some will even tell you they were invented in Vietnam, where they are called Bánh trung thu.
To be honest, I never like mooncake much. It is related to my experience with it.
When I grew up in China, I remember eating mooncakes as a teenager in the 1980s. I lived in the northern part of China, and the cakes were distributed by the units my parent worked in. They were hard as rock. But students often brought it to the school as snack. And of course most of us did not like the cakes, so sometimes kids throw them at each other.
So, this is what mooncake means to me.
(BTW, today on Twitter, someone posted a video of two people being arrested in a style that remind many people of the Cultural Revolution, supposedly for feeding the mooncakes given by the government to the dogs. I fear these two will never like mooncakes again.)
Back then, there were only three fillings: five nuts, bean pastes, jujube pastes. Even though I don’t fancy mooncakes, I do like those filled with jujube pastes. I have not seen/tasted one for a long time. They are hard to find outside of China.
The time I loved mooncake was when I was in university, always hungry. That is also when Hong Kong style mooncakes with egg yolk in the middle and soft think cake skins. There were many flavours. I ate them to fill up my stomach. And they were delicious.
But once out of China, I don’t long for mooncakes. To me, they just sugar and fat, and very bad for your weight.
Anyhow, over the years, I have learned that there are many different types of mooncakes. So, I am posting some pictures here. I bet you have never seen them, even though you think you have eaten a good amount of mooncakes.
This is the type you see often. When it is filled with jujube paste, I will take a piece.
It is very common to have an egg yolk in it:
Don’t they look delicious?
You might have seen this type, the cake skin is made from rice flour.
These pictures have a mark of our time, because the character means (clockwise from top left): “Have got vaccine shots”, “PCR test negative”, “COVID go away”, “Keep the code green”.
Much rarer to see in supermarket outside China. Overseas mooncake market is dominated by Hong Kong makers. The skin is made differently.
This one is filled with normal sweet paste.
But you can also have savory ones:
This is pork and Chinese pickles. To me, it is too close to baozi (buns).
Yunnan is a mountainous region in south west China famous for its dry-cured ham (云腿 (Cloud ham). So, they have a famous ham mooncake.
People from Yunnan swear by god that this is the best mooncake.
The international media is reporting that currently there are 33 cities and 65 millions of people in lockdown. In reality, the number might be much higher.
Stories of people begging for food, or died due to inaccessibility of medical care are spreading on social media. And that is only when/where people are allowed to speak on social media.
In Xinjiang, where Han people were telling their stories, many fear for the worse for Uyghurs. A video of a Uyghur mother begging for the leaders to help her kids who are dying was spread on Twitter, you can see it here (warning, it is very upsetting). Meanwhile, people who read Weibo often noticed that many posts have been deleted since September 9th.
Lhasa, the biggest city in Tibet has been in lockdown for a month, but no one knew it until now. What is happening in Xinjiang has happened in Tibet already. Yet, the outside world know nothing about it. Very scary!
After Chengdu, a city of 21 million people, went into lockdown, an earth quake of 6.8 shook the region. Chengdu residents found out that they were really locked and could not get out of the building. State media reported that 88 people have died of the earthquake in the centre of the quake (a town 200km away from Chengdu), as of now. The place was sealed and not much photos or videos from ordinary people can be found on social media.
Meanwhile, Dear supreme leader have successfully modified the party constitution, adding two establishments, for the upcoming party congress. Reuters sums it up in its report:
Xi is widely expected to break with precedent at the congress that starts on Oct. 16 and secure a third five-year leadership term, cementing his status as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic.
Political watchers say one possibility is an amendment that shortens the ideology to “Xi Jinping Thought”, upgrading its stature to that of “Mao Zedong Thought”.
Another possible change that would also be seen as an elevation of Xi’s power would be to enshrine the “Two Establishes”, a recent phrase which means the party establishes Xi as its “core” and his ideas as guiding principles.
This newsletter finally has a Twitter account, @cgoChina. Tell me what you want to know about China, what you liked/disliked in this newsletter and other… I would love to hear from you! (The newsletter also has a mastodon account @[email protected], if you prefer.)