How are B.C. businesses making their own Mid-Autumn Festival away from home?
Mid-Autumn Festival is on September 17, 2024. The festival signifies thankfulness for a bountiful harvest season. The full moon, which symbolizes togetherness and reunion, is the focal part of the celebration. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for families to gather over a hearty meal. A common activity is gathering to moon gaze while grazing on mooncake and tea after the feast.
Full moon, full belly
As with any family gathering, the main character is the food. For weeks leading up to Mid-Autumn Festival, bakeries and supermarkets are stocked with mooncake of all varieties. The traditional mooncake features a salted egg yolk – the “moon” – encased in lotus paste and finally wrapped in a thin crust. However, modified versions are available to suit any palate, including red bean variants and even frozen mochi wrapped versions with fruity fillings.
Imported mooncakes from well-known and storied brands from Hong Kong and China fill the aisles of supermarkets such as T&T, making the local mooncake business a competitive race. The luxurious packaging and prestige of imported mooncakes makes them an obvious choice to fit the gift-giving culture of the festival.
For local mooncake makers, that means finding creative ways to stand out. Coco Lo, owner of aGlaze Your Life, contributed lavishly designed mooncakes with health-conscious features to the market.
“As a dessert, people think that it’s oversweet or too oily. I try to make sure our customers can eat healthy, not just the outside look pretty. Our mooncake is not too too much sugar. The mooncake festival, people eat it with family that have children and old people so I want to make sure they eat healthy and that they feel good after the meal.” – Coco Lo, aGlaze Your Life owner
Lo emphasized that their artisan mooncakes are entirely handmade, ensuring they are in complete control of the quality of the product.
Over the moon
Mooncakes serve as an edible memento, with origins rooted deep in Chinese mythology. As is the case with myths and legends, the tale of the Moon Goddess has various renditions. The most popularly retold version starts with skilled archer Hou Yi shooting down the nine suns that were scorching the earth, leaving just one sun and saving earth and its people from a fiery demise. Hou Yi was then rewarded with an immortality elixir. In an act of desperation, his wife, Chang E, drank it to prevent it from falling into the hands of a robber. Chang E then ascends to the moon, becoming the Moon Goddess, forever accompanied by her pet, the Jade Rabbit. Thus, rabbit motifs are often seen during this time of year, becoming a lasting symbol of the festival.
Local rabbit rescue, Rabbitats, is taking the opportunity to promote the rescue, hosting a pop-up event at Lulu Winery in Richmond on September 14, 2024, with bunnies on-site and mooncake served. Rabbitats founder, Sorelle Saidman, hopes the event will raise funds for rescue’s growing collection of bunnies. Rabbitats is dealing with an influx in surrenders while also facing rising costs. “There’s a huge number of requests we’re getting for people wanting to surrender their rabbits. We’re not seeing any of our adoptions being returned as much as people that just can’t secure housing with pets. Every day there’s another request,” said Saidman.
Saidman says she’s always looking for new ways to promote the rescue and jumped on board when she learned of the connection, adding that the majority of their donor base are of Chinese heritage.
