Mooncake is getting more commercial than ever, even before the ghost festival month is over, I already got a box of mooncake from one of our partner. Its Tai Thong’s single yolk white lotus. The mooncake is not bad, not too sweet, not too oily… but end of the day, its just mooncake la. But nowadays, there are just so much varieties as businesses is trying to be innovative and take mooncake beyond just a mid autumn festival day cake.
The packaging is very impressive and modern, I must say, its very nice and attractive. In fact, I kept the box :P.
Well, if you think the above is fancy, check out Yong Sheng Confectionary’s mooncake gift basket, its RM60 and it comes in a very nice basket, with fake flowers on top and mooncake (very modern choices and flavours) are packed in metal boxes with retro 60’s chinese design. The flavours are unique too, yogurt mooncake, sambal curry mooncake, etc. I tell you, a visit to Yong Sheng and just tasting all these new age mooncakes flavours will make you stone :P. Although service is great there, they even serve you tea while tasting, but I still feel the old fashion flavours are better ;).
I remembered when I was a young kid, mooncake wasn’t so fancy and my mum reminded me that mooncake used to so much so simple. We were in a confectionary and we saw good old traditional mooncake, just plain simple mooncake stacked up in 4 and only cost RM7.50! That was how mooncake was for my mum growing up and that was how it was when I was a young kid. But somehow, mooncake have evolved into something expensive and not worth eating anymore, at RM45-50 per box on average. In the same shop, I also found a mini mooncake, which is about 1/2 the size of the normal mooncake at only 70 cents for plain lotus or RM1.00 for lotus with egg yolk.
So, what is the fundamental needs of mooncake? Basically its about the Mid Autumn Festival but for me, these are Chinese festival food stuff. There is only one purpose and it’s basically a unity food for the family. The whole purpose is for family to gather on mid autumn night, sit together, admiring the moon over a cup a tea with mooncake ;).
Nowadays, even before the Chinese seventh month have start, mooncake promotions have already started to give more lead time for confectioneries to market their mooncake and more time for the market to enjoy mooncake longer. But will these make the mooncake no longer special one day and losing it’s identity? Will mooncake be an everyday pastry one fine day?
As Chinese likes to practice the culture of giving especially during festive season, mooncake have now become a must give for most Chinese businessman and also for relatives and friends. This have encouraged confectioneries to be creative with their packaging to compete against the competitor. Probably this is one of the factor why mooncakes are getting more expensive, for the packaging!
So, why can’t mooncake be simple? Should mooncake stay simple? Are we losing our traditional roots by modifing mooncake to something different from what our previous generations enjoyed?
End of the day, I think it doesn’t matter as long as it serve as the reason for the family to sit down and enjoy together. Let it be the good old lotus or the popular green tea, chocolate or the weird sambal curry, as long its a mooncake, its still mid autumn.
Happy Mid Autumn festival everyone ;).
Cupnoodles | 
11 5th, 2008| 
