During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese people are sure to admire the moon. So, what is our favorite traditional food on this day? That's right, mooncakes!
Mooncakes, also known as moon pies, harvest cakes, and reunion cakes, were originally used as offerings to worship the moon goddess. Do you know how many kinds of mooncakes there are in China? Even Chinese people might have a hard time listing them all in one breath!
Mooncakes come in various styles from Guangdong, Shanxi, Beijing, Suzhou, Chaozhou, and Yunnan. The fillings include dates, egg yolks, red bean paste, five-nut paste, and lotus seed paste, which are loved by people from north to south. Among them, the snow skin mooncakes originated in Hong Kong in the 1980s and were first introduced by the founder of the Tai Pan Mooncake, Guo Hongjun, in 1989. They quickly became popular throughout Hong Kong. Snow skin mooncakes do not need to be baked, and the process is simple. The texture is soft, smooth, and slightly elastic, with a white color like snow.
This time, we prepared glutinous rice flour, mooncake molds, and black sesame and purple sweet potato fillings to give everyone a chance to experience the joy of making mooncakes. We didn't expect that everyone would be a culinary master! Students were busy kneading dough, rolling out dough, filling the mooncakes, and pressing the molds... They all made the mooncakes of their choice, with patterns such as rabbits, flowers, and trees, and Chinese lion dances... It was a feast for the eyes.
After putting the mooncakes in the refrigerator, we began our lecture on Mid-Autumn Festival knowledge and drew the classic stories of Houyi Shooting the Sun and Chang'e Flying to the Moon. According to legend, there were ten suns in the sky in ancient times, and Houyi was rewarded with the elixir of immortality by the Queen Mother of the West for shooting down nine of them, leaving only one sun to illuminate the earth. His wife, Chang'e, was forced to drink the elixir by the thief Fengmeng and flew to the moon. From then on, the couple were forever separated, and the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month became the Mid-Autumn Festival, a time when people yearn for reunion.
This is the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival! Have you remembered this beautiful and moving love legend? Next time during the Mid-Autumn Festival, please enjoy eating mooncakes and watching the moon with your family, and tell this Mid-Autumn Festival legend to your family members!
Comentários