Mid-Autumn Festival: Mooncakes, Legends and Family Dinners

The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the harvest moon is said to be at its roundest and brightest. It is a festival of reunion. Families gather for dinner, share mooncakes filled with lotus seed paste and salted egg yolk, peel pomelos, light lanterns for the children and look up at the moon while someone retells the legend of Chang'e. After Lunar New Year, it is the most important family holiday for many Chinese households, in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Vancouver alike.

A festival of the full moon

The festival grew out of ancient traditions of honouring the moon at the autumn harvest, and by the Tang and Song dynasties moon-viewing had become a popular custom. The round moon stands for completeness and reunion (團圓), which is why the festival is above all about being together. Those who cannot go home are said to look at the same moon as the family they miss, a theme that runs through centuries of Chinese poetry.

On the Western calendar the date moves each year, usually landing between mid-September and early October. In Hong Kong and in much of the Cantonese diaspora, the day after the festival is also a time for gatherings, and the evenings around it are busy with family dinners.

Mooncakes: lotus seed, salted yolk and snow skin

The mooncake (月餅) is the festival's signature food, given in elegant boxes to family, friends, colleagues and clients, and cut into small wedges to share.

• Lotus seed paste with salted yolk (蓮蓉蛋黃). The classic Cantonese mooncake has a thin, golden baked crust, often pressed with a pattern or characters, around a smooth, sweet lotus seed paste. One or two salted duck egg yolks sit at the centre, so a cut mooncake shows a small "moon" inside. The rich, savoury yolk balances the sweetness of the paste.
• Red bean and five-nut (五仁). Red bean paste is a gentler, earthier filling. Five-nut mooncakes, packed with walnuts, almonds, melon seeds, sesame and other nuts, divide opinion; many grandparents love them.
• Snow-skin (冰皮月餅). A modern style with a soft, chewy wrapper of glutinous rice flour that is not baked and is kept chilled. It was popularised by Hong Kong bakeries in the late 1980s, though accounts of its first appearance differ, and it now comes in custard, fruit, durian and many other flavours.

Mooncakes are dense and rich, so they are traditionally eaten in thin slices with a pot of tea. A smooth oolong or a mellow pu'er cuts through the richness well.

The legends: Chang'e, Hou Yi and the jade rabbit

The best-known story behind the festival is a legend, and like many legends it is told in several versions. In one popular telling, the archer Hou Yi shot down nine of the ten suns that were scorching the earth and was rewarded with an elixir of immortality. His wife, Chang'e (嫦娥), drank it, sometimes to keep it from a thief, sometimes by her own choice, and floated up to the moon, where she lives still. Hou Yi is said to have laid out her favourite fruits and cakes under the moon each year, one of the origins given for the festival's offerings.

Chang'e is said to share the moon with a jade rabbit pounding medicine, and in some versions with Wu Gang, a woodcutter condemned to chop a tree that grows back each time. Another widely told story claims that messages hidden in mooncakes helped coordinate an uprising against the Yuan dynasty. Historians regard it as folklore rather than recorded fact, but it remains a favourite to tell the children.

Pomelo, lanterns and the family table

Pomelo (柚子). Pomelos come into season in early autumn, and the name 柚 (yòu) sounds like 佑, "blessing" or "protection". Families peel them together after dinner; in Hong Kong, children once wore the empty peel as a hat, a memory many older Cantonese families share.

Lanterns (燈籠). Lanterns in the shapes of rabbits, carp, star fruit and the moon itself are carried by children in the evening. In Hong Kong and in Cantonese communities abroad, parks and gardens often hold lantern displays around the festival.

The family dinner. Many families hold a reunion meal on or near the festival night. There is no single fixed menu, but Cantonese families often choose dishes that suit an early autumn gathering: roast duck, a whole steamed fish, crab in season, taro and other autumn produce, finished with fruit, mooncakes and tea.

Mid-Autumn in Vancouver

In Vancouver, the festival blends the old and the new. Mooncakes appear in Chinese bakeries and supermarkets weeks in advance, lantern events take place in parks and gardens around the city, and families gather in restaurants for a long dinner before going outside to look at the moon. For second-generation families, it is often the time grandparents tell the story of Chang'e once again.

Gathering at Neptune Palace

For a Mid-Autumn family dinner, both our Vancouver (Marine Gateway) and Burnaby (Brentwood) locations serve dinner from 5pm, with set dinners for four and six that bring seafood, poultry, greens and dessert to the table, and the six-person sets open with Peking duck. If you prefer to celebrate over dim sum, a basket of Steamed Pomelo Sponge Cake (Ma Lai Go) makes a quiet nod to the season. Reserve by calling Vancouver at (604) 423-3386 or Burnaby at (604) 566-0897; the evenings around the festival are popular, so it is worth calling early.

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