Mooncakes and Lanterns at the Moon Festival

Updated : September 2024

The beautiful Moon Goddess waits patiently for this day every year to be reunited with her mortal lover on Earth. Thousands of years ago, a forbidden love affair was formed between the immortal and her mortal lover, a cowherd, on earth. When they were discovered, the Gods banished the Moon Goddess to the Moon and forbade her to contact her lover. The villagers who witnessed this love story were so moved to help them that they baked mooncakes with hidden love messages to help the lovers communicate.

This is one of the many legends behind the Chinese Moon Festival but is often also called the Mid Autumn Festival.

To this day, the Moon Festival is still celebrated by Chinese Communities the world over and if you look closely at the moon on this night, you might see the Moon Goddess too. (There are many other versions of the myths about the Moon Festival that have evolved over the last 4000 years and this is the version that I heard growing up.)

The Moon Festival is also popularly known as the Mid Autumn Festival and it falls on the 15th day of the 8th Month of the Lunar Calendar. This is the second most important festival after Chinese New Year and Chinese communities around the world celebrate it by having a big family meal, lighting coloured lanterns, letting off fireworks, eating mooncakes and admire the moon.

In Kuala Lumpur, the shops around Chinatown will be decorated with lanterns and festive banners. Lots of shops will show off their latest lantern creations, made with a bamboo skeleton and colourful cellophane paper. In ancient times, the lanterns would be of nature like flowers and animals. Today, the more popular ones are of modern superheros and manga characters as they are mainly for children. Besides selling mooncakes, the shops will also sell “piggy biscuits”, which are biscuits made with a similar dough to the mooncake skins in the shape of a little pig and wrapped in a red piggy cage. They were my favourite treats.

The Mooncake Rebellion: When Pastries Sparked a Revolution

In the heart of ancient China, during the Yuan Dynasty (circa 1279 to 1368), a shadow loomed over the land—a Mongolian rule that clung like mist on a moonlit night. But beneath this oppressive regime, a clandestine movement was brewing, led by none other than the future founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang.

Mooncakes held the key to their rebellion, they were little vessels of hope, each one concealing a secret. Zhu’s military counsellor, Liu Bowen, played the role of culinary mastermind. His ingenious plan was to hide revolutionary notes inside the mooncakes.

The Covert Message Spreads

The rebels distributed these mooncakes far and wide, like whispers in the wind. The hidden notes revealed the date of the planned revolt. And then, on the appointed day, they stormed the palace, overthrowing the Mongols. The Ming Dynasty was born, and Zhu Yuanzhang ascended to the throne, the first emperor.

Mooncakes in Hong Kong with secret messages

In 2019, around the Mid Autumn festival, some daring local bakeries made mooncakes imprinted wiht anti-extradition slogans. At that politically charged time, they were a bit more subtle wiht hte messaging for fear of being imprisoned. Instead of explicit protest slogans, mooncakes bore a pro-democracy message that didn’t directly reference the ongoing protests. One popular slogan read: “We really f***ing love Hong Kong”.

Celebrating the Moon Festival in London Chinatown

In London, you will see the lanterns festooned across Gerrard Street and restaurants packed with families celebrating this festival. In Asia, all the children will get paper lanterns shaped to the likeness of today’s superheroes which they will parade around the neighbourhood with their friends. A bit like Trick or Treating at Halloween without the costumes. Meanwhile, the grown-ups will sip tea and eat mooncakes while admiring the moon.

Keep an eye out for announcements and the Chinatown Association usually hold a party to celebrate the festival.

Mooncakes and the varieties

Mooncakes are usually made with a thin pastry crust that is shaped around a mould and filled with a sweetened filling.  Chinese ones are usually made round and have messages stamped on the crust. A well-made crust is usually really thin and is usually made with lard,but the more modern ones now use ultra-processed seed oils.

This year, I was sent a moon cake from Singapore from the Szechuan Village restaurant which was filled with lotus seed paste and 2 salted egg yolks. The texture was a bit too soft and it was lacking in one of the main ingredients, melon seeds. Good enough but not great. I was trying to get the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong to send me some of their award-winning ones but they insisted they wouldn’t travel well in the post.

Every year, the mooncake manufacturers try to outdo each other with ever more outrageous flavours. They all look and taste really weird like Durian Snow Skin Mooncake (which has a tasteless white outer skin and durian-flavoured filling), strawberry, orange, green tea, pandan and chocolate. I still prefer the traditional ones with either lotus seed filling or red bean filling.

Where to buy mooncakes in London

In London, you can buy locally made mooncakes at the Kowloon Bakery on Gerrard Street. They are one of the few shops that make their own. All the supermarkets in Chinatown sell imported ones, mainly from Hong Kong or you can buy them online from our friends at Wai Yee Hong. The best one is from Wing Wah, imported from Hong Kong. (Tip: Most of the shops in Chinatown sell them at a discount the day after the Moon Festival. )

Besides mooncakes, we have other special foods for the Moon Festival like these strange looking water chestnuts shaped like a horn, called Ling Kok but has several other names like Bull’s Horn, water caltrops or bat nuts. These are boiled and then cracked open to eat the starchy filling. It doesn’t taste of much and has a crumbly texture. We eat them during the Moon festival as they look like bats and the Chinese name for bats sounds like prosperity.

These water caltrops are seasonal and are usually harvested about the time of the Mid Autumn festival. They are fruits of an aquatic plant like water lilies and have been cultivated in East Asia for centuries.

How the Mid-Autumn festival is celebrated by other East Asian communities

Other countries in East Asia celebrate a similar festival.

• Korea: Known as “Chuseok,” Koreans honour their ancestors, share food, and appreciate the moon’s radiance.
• Japan: Referred to as “Tsukimi,” the Japanese admire the moon while enjoying rice dumplings.
• Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia: These countries celebrate the Chinese Moon Festival with family reunion meals,moon-gazing and mooncakes too.
• In Thailand, people in Thung Yao subdistrict, Trang province, take this festival very seriously, wearing qipao or cheongsam and changshan for men. They gather to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival together.

Have you every had mooncakes? Which flavour do you like best?