EDMONDS — Today marks the start of an important Chinese holiday.
The three-day Mid-Autumn Festival is so important, in fact, that its original meaning has been overwhelmed by its most celebrated icon: the mooncake.
An entire section of the Edmonds 99 Ranch Market, part of the California-based Asian supermarket chain, is devoted to the highly-stylized, thick and sweet confections. The cakes look similar to hockey pucks, both in shape and in heft. Most come in packages of four, with each cake set carefully in its own section in decorative tins.
A large poster of an ethereal woman in a silver dress presides over the display. She holds a mooncake in delicate hands, offering it to celebrants of the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Lantern or Mooncake Festival.
She is the woman of the moon.
The short version of the story is that the woman was beamed up to the moon and became a goddess. For some mooncake aficionados, even that version is a little too long.
“We’re celebrating mooncake,” said Xin Sun, 22, who moved to Edmonds from northeast China four years ago.
Sun slowly took in the dozens of tins and boxes in 99 Ranch Market’s mooncake aisle, trying to distinguish between the $8.99 box for four cakes made of lotus paste and the $45 box for four cakes made of seeds.
“Some are better than others, but I just pick whatever looks good,” Sun said.
Most mooncakes are as dense as marzipan and as sweet as evaporated milk. Relief from the saccharine-sweet filling is found in the center of the cake, where the crumbly yolk of a duck egg waits for the persistent festival celebrant.
The cakes are normally eaten in small slices with Chinese tea.
As strange as the flavors may sound be to the American palette, around this time of year, mooncakes sell like hotcakes in local Asian markets.
The bakery at 99 Ranch Market worked for weeks on end to churn out the supermarket’s nine signature varieties, said Stephen Liu, general manager of the store.
“Everyone has a box in their shopping cart today,” he said.
Liu’s favorite is the bakery’s double-yolk cake, on sale for $14.58 for four. But when it comes to the Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon’s the limit on mooncakes. Like buying a bottle of fine wine for Thanksgiving or Christmas, some are willing to spend $12 or more for each three-inch cake – that’s $48 for a standard four-cake tin.
Many Chinese-Americans eat mooncakes during their holiday like some Americans eat candy canes at Christmas, with little thought to their place in history, said Rebecca Ip, editor of the Seattle Chinese Post.
For older people, especially those who left communist China, mooncakes hold special significance, she said. Chinese dissidents spread the word about an uprising against Mongol rulers in the 14th century by hiding notes in mooncakes. Public gatherings were outlawed, but the revolt was successful thanks to the holiday fare, Ip said.
Many young Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans don’t know that for many older Chinese, the cakes taste of freedom, she said.
There are dozens of mooncake varieties sold at Asian stores, but Tee Eng, 21, couldn’t find what she really wanted: a white, round cake with a special bean paste filling. She said she hasn’t seen that type since she left Cambodia five years ago.
Instead, she picked up a box of double-yolk cakes made of lotus seed paste. It doesn’t matter how much the cakes cost, she said, as long as everyone tastes a bite of the moon.
“We’re showing appreciation,” she said. “It’s appreciation for the moon.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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