Mid-Autumn Festival  

 

 
 

The Mid-Autumn festival is also known as Lantern Festival or the Mooncake Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. It is usually falls around mid or late September in the Gregorian calendar. This is the ideal time, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, to celebrate the abundance of the summer's harvest. But to those folks who stay in the city, Mid-Autumn festival (or known as Yuan Xiao Jie in Mandarin) is about lanterns and moon cakes, which are a type of Chinese delicacy, made for the Festival celebration.

 

That night, when the moon is at its fullest and brightest, Chinese family and friends will gather together to admire the moon, eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Colourful lanterns will be hung over their houses while children played with their lanterns. Some families will carry out a praying ceremony to deities including Chang'e. In general, it is a time where the entire family member will sit down together and have quality time of communication.

 
Paper lanterns where a candle will light up in the middle of the lantern during night time.
Moon cake with a salted egg in the middle.
 

Nowadays, moon cakes are exchanged as gifts among family and friends to maintain the good relationship over the years which are why shops and supermarkets display a colourful array of various types of lanterns and moon cake designs before the festival begins. Traditional moon cakes are mainly made from lotus seed paste and lard. The moon cakes have a thin tender skin enveloping the sweet and oily filling of lotus sweet paste, sweet bean paste and many more. If you cut a moon cake into half, you might find one or more salted egg in the center of the moon cake. Normally, there is an imprint on the surface of each moon cake. This imprint might represent Chinese characters such as “longevity”.
 

In Penang , you can find moon cakes even in the seventh month of the lunar calendar. These moon cakes are easily purchased at restaurants and super markets in Penang . There are a lot of moon cake makers which provide customers with different varieties which ranges from traditional moon cakes to modern moon cakes which have the filling of chocolates, coffee and other designs. There will always be new varieties of moon cakes fillings to attract more customers from year to year. Do try the moon cakes as they just range around RM10 per piece.

 
Imprint of moon cake which tell the type of moon cake
Lanterns with a lot of colorful shape