Tarted-up mooncakes sell like
hotcakes By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Mooncakes, the traditional delicacy of
the Mid-Autumn Festival, were once regarded as symbols
of family reunion and represented the round harvest
moon. But in recent years, as Chinese palates have
become more jaded and customers have grown richer, the
cakes have morphed into an ostentatious show of wealth.
And these tarted-up mooncakes - some filled with
chocolate, ice cream or shark's fin - are selling like
hotcakes. Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs are cashing in.
Mooncakes even have been called by some, and
rightly so, an urbane form of bribery. A presentable box
of mooncakes these days may come with a bottle of French
red wine, a top-quality root of ginseng - or even a
diamond ring.
The festival, which this year
falls on Tuesday, also celebrates the love story of moon
beauty Chang E and her archer husband Hou Yi. And so
jewelers have cashed in on the legend, transforming it
into a sort of Chinese Valentine's Day - pairing
heart-shaped mooncakes with heart-shaped diamonds.
The packaging of the mooncakes has become more
elaborate and the boxes could either be draped with
imperial-style golden silk and outfitted with wooden
carvings or even silver-plated. According to the
Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily, competitive supermarkets
in southern China have recruited well-known artists to
contribute bronze sculptures to boost the sales of their
mooncake boxes. The paper reported that the price per
box, which also includes a miniature sculpture, starts
at 1,888 yuan (US$227).
Even bakeries in
backward inland provinces such as Shanxi in the west are
rolling out pricey cakes to cash in on the lucrative
gift-giving tradition. The state media reported that
supermarkets in the province were offering mooncakes
containing real gold for 9,999 yuan ($1,202) - the price
being an auspicious sign of luck rather than a true
reflection of value.
Purists have deplored the
decline of Chinese mooncakes as an ancient symbol of
family reunion and happiness. Bolstered by precious
trimmings, these cakes have now become means for
bribery, complained the official China Daily. "Fancy
mooncakes are popular because they are purchased and
given as gifts to curry favor or to out right bribe
officials," the newspaper editorialized.
"Mooncakes present those officials with gifts in
a guise that is hard to detect. Presenting cash would be
too obvious, while presenting food is not."
Sheng Xiwen, a construction-company manager,
however, takes a different view. "I would not call it an
outright bribery, but just a convenient way to oblige
someone in a position of power," he said. Sheng's long
list of mooncake gifts for the season includes everybody
from the local Urban Planning Bureau to the district
bureau of the state gas company.
"For us, it
[giving gifts] makes things much easier when you need to
obtain certain building permissions," he said.
The Chinese harvest season, the moon festival
and the mooncakes were not always so commercial. For a
thousand years, the Chinese have eaten mooncakes at the
Mid-Autumn Festival - the 15th day of the eighth lunar
month, which celebrates the end of the harvest and the
most spectacular full moon.
There are records of
yuebing (as the mooncakes are known in Mandarin)
from the Tang Dynasty (609-960). It is said that
messages concealed in the cakes fomented a peasant
uprising against the foreign Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty
(1279-1368).
As the Mid-Autumn Festival is an
occasion of reunion, the round mooncake symbolizes the
family circle and the flavor brings to mind the
sweetness of familial ties.
Traditionally, the
flaked pastry encloses a variety of fillings - white or
red lotus seed, orange peel, cassia bloom or red bean
paste. And while each province in China produces its own
version, the mooncakes of the southern province of
Guangdong are most popular with fillings of egg yolk -
which in their yellow roundness represent the moon.
But what was once a delectable treat, packed in
a modest brown paper bag and shared with the closest
members of the family, has nowadays become an
elaborately packaged gift traded back and forth and
often laden with goodies far exceeding the price of the
mooncakes.
"The Mid-Autumn Festival used to be
one of my favorite festivals," said Beijing woman Bai
Yan. "You could celebrate it outdoors, watching the moon
with friends and family, and it cost very little to feel
festive - you only needed to buy some fruits and a few
mooncakes. Nowadays buying and giving mooncakes has
become a costly affair."
Since the traditional
mooncakes are baked with lard, young people tend to
avoid them as too sugary and lacking a fresh flavor.
Fevered competition, however, has spurred the emergence
of all kinds of exotic mooncake varieties - filled with
cream cheese and raisins, ginseng and bird's nest,
shark's fin and abalone.
The battleground for
the yuppie market is where multinationals such as
Starbucks and Haagen-Dazs are winning the war with
Beijing's famous and venerable bakery shops, Fangshan
and Daoxiangcun.
"My mother likes the
traditional cakes, so every year I buy one of Fangshan's
boxes for her," said Xiao Xia, who works as a
beautician. "As for myself, I prefer the small mooncakes
with green-tea flavor from Starbucks."
The
mooncakes dished out by Haagen-Dazs in downtown Beijing
are perhaps the most sought-after modern version of the
Chinese traditional treat. Made with chocolate crust and
filled with different flavors of ice cream, Haagen-Dazs'
red and gold gift boxes sell like hotcakes, indeed.
"Any chance one can get a box of them in the
week before the festival?" asked this correspondent.
"You must be joking," replied a Haagen-Dazs
staff member whose name card read Fisker. "Our clients
begin to place their orders in July. In September it is
virtually impossible to get any of our mooncakes," the
staffer quipped as he busily dealt with a long queue of
people lining up to collect their pre-ordered mooncakes.
