Sunflower Hand Bouquet

A sunflower bouquet with a smiley face – nothing can be a more delightful gift than this.

At a branch of Xing Hua Lou, a famous traditional bakery chain in Shanghai, the evidence of the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival is visible. Thousands of boxes of mooncakes are stacked high inside the store and the staff can barely move.

Outside the store, meanwhile, touts try to entice customers in with laminated pamphlets offering up to 25 per cent off the listed price.

The Autumn Moon Festival – which this year falls on September 22 – is a traditional Chinese holiday. It is feted by the consumption of mooncakes, the roundness of the sweet pastry symbolising the union of family members.

According to the Shanghai Confectionery Industry Association, 21,000 tonnes of mooncakes were sold in the city in 2009 – worth Rmb1.85bn ($275m). Sales for the whole of China were estimated at Rmb11bn according to China Reports Hall, a market research firm based in Xiamen.

“It’s the time of the year for businesses to show gratitude to their business partners, to the government officials and to their own employees,” says Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research (CMR) Group in Shanghai. “It’s a vital way of building relationships.”

However, in recent years the gifting of mooncakes has taken on a new significance in China, where a show of purchasing power and price-indexed gratitude has become more important. “As people get richer, they need more expensive gifts,” says Mr Rein.

Food retailers have cashed in on this opportunity with zeal. At Xing Hua Lou, single mooncakes, which typically cost about Rmb5 each, are repackaged in gift tins. The lowest price for a basic boxed set of eight goes for Rmb78, while for those seeking luxury there is a Rmb780 version filled with abalone fins.

Western retailers such as Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs have also embraced the seasonal retail opportunity. Häagen-Dazs, whose mooncake vouchers are one of the most circulated in China, offers boxed sets that range in price from Rmb268 to Rmb988 – a steep price tag for many Chinese workers.

Kris Kaminsky, the food and beverage manager at the Portman Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai, says the hotel expects to sell about 20,000 of its boxes this year. The value is often not in the mooncakes, he says, but in the presentation. “We’ve created a very nice red box that looks like a jewellery box. It’s a box to be kept after the mooncakes are eaten.”

Mooncakes are also the most re-gifted item in China. “Many people give their mooncakes to someone else,” says Shen Hongfei, a well-known food writer. “Not because people don’t want to eat them but because some receive so many gift boxes that they want to offer them as presents. It’s a sign of respect and gives face.”

Byron Kan, the general manager of the Shanghai Centre, which houses the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel, has chosen to give Häagen-Dazs gift certificates this year to his corporate clients.

“[Mooncakes] are indeed vital, must-do corporate gifts,” he says. “But when companies started giving more and more extravagant mooncake gifts, to the point that the packaging and the gifts inside cost more than the mooncakes [themselves], the government decided to step in a few years ago and put a limit on the price.”

Now you can no longer buy a mooncake box with a watch as a gift inside or with solid-gold packaging.”

Many vouchers are returned for cash, allowing touts and middlemen to make a healthy profit margin. But as with any paper asset with an expiration date, the window for such buy and sell activity is limited. “The value of these mooncake vouchers go up and down according to how close one gets to the final date,” says Mr Rein of CMR.

Paul Smith, the president of Costa Coffee China, which expects to sell 8,000 boxes from its 70 outlets this year, offers his own solution. “We honour the vouchers for up to one year after the date,” he says.

“So if they don’t get to collect for this year, they can do it next year.”

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06e7598a-c1db-11df-9d90-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss

The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, which usually falls around late September or early October. In 2010, the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Wednesday, 22 September 2010. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties across different countries.

The festival dates back over 3,000 years to moon worship in China’s Shang Dynasty. It was first called Zhongqiu Jie (literally “Mid-Autumn Festival”) in the Zhou Dynasty. In Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival.

Lantern Festival Mooncake
Mooncakes are Chinese pastries traditionally eaten during the Lantern Festival. They are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. Mooncakes are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.

Most mooncakes consist of a thin tender skin enveloping a sweet, dense filling. The mooncake may contain one or more whole salted egg yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon. Very rarely, mooncakes are also served steamed or fried. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.

Traditional mooncakes have an imprint on top consisting of the Chinese characters for “longevity” or “harmony” as well as the name of the bakery and the filling in the moon cake. Imprints of the moon, the Chang’e woman on the moon, flowers, vines, or a rabbit (symbol of the moon) may surround the characters for additional decoration.

Mooncakes are considered a delicacy; production is labor-intensive and few people make them at home. Most mooncakes are bought at markets and bakeries.

Moon Festival Around The World
The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, Zhongqiu Festival, or in Chinese, Zhongqiujie (中秋節), is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese and Chinese descendants around the world. It is a legal holiday in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. The Moon Festival is also a widely celebrated festival in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and Indonesia. Please note that in Hong Kong, the official holiday date is the day after the festival, thus in 2010, the official holiday for mooncake festival in Hong Kong is on Thursday, 23 September 2010.

Zhong Qiu Jie / Mid-Autumn Festival In Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most charming and colourful annual events that celebrates, among other things, harvest time with the biggest and brightest moon of the year.

On this festival, parents allow children to stay up late and take them to high vantage points such as The Peak to light their lanterns and watch the huge autumn moon rise while eating their moon cakes. Public parks are ablaze with many thousands of lanterns in all colours, sizes and shapes. There are lantern carnivals and lantern exhibitions over Hong Kong every year.

For the three nights straddling the Mid-Autumn festival, visitors can also see one of the most spectacular sights imaginable. It’s a 67-metre-long ‘fire dragon’ that winds its way with much fanfare and smoke through a collection of streets located in Tai Hang, close to Victoria Park in Causeway Bay.

Over a century ago, Tai Hang was a coastal village whose inhabitants lived off farming and fishing. A few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival a typhoon and then a plague wreaked havoc on the village. While the villagers were repairing the damage, a python entered the village and ate their livestock. According to some villagers, the python was the son of the Dragon King.

A soothsayer decreed the only way to stop the chaos was to stage a fire dance for three days and nights during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. The villagers made a huge dragon of straw and covered it with incense sticks, which they then lit. Accompanied by drummers and erupting firecrackers, they danced for three days and three nights – and the plague disappeared.

Zhong Qiu Jie / Mid-Autumn Festival In China
Chinese have long linked the ups and down of life to the changes of the moon. As the full moon is round (轮 – yuan), and symbolize reunion (圆 – yuan), it is also known as the Festival of Reunion in China. All family members try to get together on this special day. Those who can not return home watch the bright moonlight and feel deep longing for their loved ones.

In China, Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the major holiday, with many festival activities and special public performances. After a reunion dinner, families will go together to scenic spots and parks for moon appreciation parties, eating mooncakes and pomeloes in the cool night air and praying for a safe year.

Different parts of China each has different ways to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. In some places people make fires inside a towers to celebrate the festival, because they think the fire is a symbol of good business. In the Zhejiang Province, watching the flood tide of the Qian-tang River during the Mid-Autumn Festival is not only a must for local peple, but also an attraction for those from other parts of the country.

In Nanjing, people cook duck with sweet-scented osmanthus, because Nanjing people think sweet-scented osmanthus is a symbol of peace. In Guangzhou, a huge lantern show is a big attraction for locals and visitors. Thousands of differently shaped lanterns are lit, forming a fantastic contrast with the bright moonlight. In Chaozhou, Guangdong Province, people eat taro to celebrate the festival, because the taro harvest occurs at the same time as the festival. They eat taro and hope the harvest is good in the next year.

Source: http://sgholiday.com/2010/08/moon-cake-festival-2010/

The Mid Autumn Festival is one of the most enchanting nights on the East Asian calendar. Families in China, Malaysia and Singapore gather to give thanks, celebrate family unity, look at the full moon and enjoy a celebratory banquet.

The festival is an ancient Chinese tradition which commemorates China’s 14th-century uprising against Mongolian occupation. Rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes which they smuggled to compatriots.

Today, in honour of this, people eat special yuek beng (mooncake) – pastry crust filled with sugary fillings such as lotus seed paste or red bean paste. Coloured Chinese paper lanterns, traditionally in the shapes of animals, hang from almost every house.

Source : http://www.whatsonwhen.com/sisp/index.htm?fx=event&event_id=98906

Chinese Mid Autumn Festival, also known as Chinese Moon Festival, takes place at the 15th day of the eighth Chinese lunar month. The reason for celebrating the festival during that time is that it is the time when the moon is at its fullest and brightest.

2010 Mid-Autumn Festival will be on September 22, and the China public holiday for this festival lasts for three days from September 22nd to September 24th.

The Mid-autumn festival is one of the two most important occasions in Chinese calendar (the other being the Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year) and it is an official holiday. It is a time for families to be together, so people far from home will gaze longingly at the moon and think about their families.

Mooncake is the traditional food for mid-autumn festival which is round and symbolizes reunion.

Source : http://www.chinatravel.com/focus/mid-autumn-festival/