Moon Cakes For The Mid-Autumn Festival and All Year

Traditional Mooncakes

Traditional mooncakes are brown and look like savoury pies with classic scenes and Chinese writing engraved on the top. The ones I tried today were savoury, either with lumps of egg white or egg yolk in the middle.

I admit that when I see both I go for the brightly coloured ones first.

The packaging is beautiful, too.

At Payoh Toa Central Community Club near Payoh To a MRT station in Singapore I attended a Toastmasters International speakers' club meeting where the theme of the evening was The Moon. The toastmaster of the evening asked each person in turn to say how they celebrated or used to celebrate the mooncake festival. Members and guests described how they lit lanterns.

Lanterns
The room was decorated with paper lanterns, in bright oranges and greens and blues. The paper lanterns when carried outdoors contain candles. Children like to carry lanterns, just like they are fond of sparkler. The paper lanterns did not contain any candles. Although it was evening we had plenty of spotlights.

(I don't like candles indoors - a fire risk. (In London my Hindu tenants held a baby naming ceremony involving fire in the living room, which set off the fire alarm and the whole building was evacuated.)

Tip
I asked, "Where you can buy cheaper mooncakes? They are so expensive in the Tanglin Club, the Sheraton Skyline hotel, the ice cream parlours, the pop-up Mooncake shops."

I got an answer from another Toastmasters member, but not what I expected:
"Mooncakes are cheaper in Taiwan!" A tall, black-haired girl told me: "Ten dollars for one in Singapore, but ten dollars for ten in Taiwan!"

I asked her, "Are you from Taiwan?"

"Yes. Mooncakes are so expensive here in Singapore. In Taiwan you can buy them cheaply - and all year!"

Taiwan has shot from somewhere lost in the long list of places I'd like to visit, to top place. A destination where you can eat mooncakes, every day, every meal, between meals. Heaven.

Singapore's mooncakes are "So expensive, la!" (La is a Singlish end of sentence exclamation, indicating nothing except that you are Singaporean." So expensive to buy mooncakes in Singapore - I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought so. Taiwan, you are on my list. Maybe in 2017.

More about the origin of the mooncake festival in my next post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.