Mid-Autumn Festival is coming so the company I work for gave us all moon cakes in advance of the week off of work.
Worshiping the Moon and the Earth; A three thousand year old tradition of celebrating the harvest season all across China and many other Asian countries. It's a good time meet friends and stay with family while pigging out on what ever delicious foods you get served.
Ever since the Zhou Dynasty 3000 years ago Chinese tradition has always used this time of year to pay extra attention to the moon and this is the second most important festival in China after Spring festival which is also based on the moon's cycle. Giving away moon cakes however has been a tradition since the about the 1300's AD starting with the Yuan Dynasty, which was rather short lived and in my opinion uneventful compared to other parts of China's history.
The school gave us all two fancy boxes of Moon Cakes. The packaging is half the excitement. It's a pretty cool box with two drawers and four Moon Cakes in each drawer. I gave the other box to the couple who own the small shop next to my home, her husband was quite happy about it.
They come in a bunch of different types or flavours. I don't really like most but this one was ok, its got nuts and seeds mashed together and held with honey, one of my cats was a little more interested than me. I'd say everyone will eat moon cakes this time of year but not my cats.
I will keep the box and use it at Christmas to put some gifts in even though it has moon Festival splashed all over it in Chinese it won't matter to the person who gets, they won't be able to read anyways. Plus they will be happy to get such a cool box as well.
Find out more about Moon Cakes here:
https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/mid-autumn-festival-history-origin.htm
