Yesterday, September 22nd, Chinese (and Vietnamese) people around the world celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival. Because of the sizeable Chinese population in Malaysia, the Moon Festival is widely celebrated in Malaysia (although it was not a public holiday, so I still had to go to work). The Moon Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival
In Malaysia the most obvious signs of the celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival were a large number of colorful paper fans hung in public places and malls (although the Amcorp Mall where I live has yet to remove their Hari Raya decorations, so there was no sign of the Moon Festival here) and shops selling "moon cakes".
Moon Cakes
Moon cakes are traditional food for celbrating the Moon Festival. The typical moon cake is shaped like a hockey puck (although about twice as large). The inside of the cake is made of a paste from ground up lotus seeds and often the cakes contain a yolk of a duck egg. The cake is covered by a thin later of dough and usually have elaborate decorations on the top. Moon cakes come in a variety of flavors and high end moon cakes come packed in elaborate packaging (I think that a pretty package may be as important as the taste of the cake).
I tried one moon cake. Let's just say it is nothing like the Betty Crocker chocolate cake that my Mom used to make for my birthday. But I guess that over 1 billion Chinese can't be wrong!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake
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