Months before the actual date of the Mooncake Festival or the lesser used name of Mid-Autumn Festival, everybody in Malaysia is clamouring to buy the sweet delicacy shaped like the moon to savour or to send to friends overseas.
Round mooncakes © Discpicture
The mooncakes are so well-known that a friend who was taking a box of the cakes to her daughter residing in Australia had a humorous encounter with a Customs Officer. When he had to cut open the cake to check as was usual Down Under, he mischievously told my friend, “your mooncake has no moon!” knowing very well that if there was any egg yolk in the mooncakes, they would have been confiscated. The point is that this Australian Custom Officer knew that the mooncakes do come with egg yolks.
Mooncake with egg yolk cut open © age fotostock
Today there are so many varieties of mooncakes with so many different types of filling that you are spoilt for choice. In the early days, the mooncakes were packed in a roll of four pieces in opaque white paper with a simple red square piece of paper stuck to it. Now people buy the mooncakes not only for its unusual sweet filling but also because of their beautiful packaging!
In Malaysia this festival is celebrated not only by the Chinese community but also by the non-Chinese population. The children loved to participate in the lantern processions while the adults celebrate by exchanging mooncakes with friends and family.
 Mooncake festival, Kuching, Sarawak © age fotostock |
 Multi-racial children playing with lanterns © Discpicture
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 Malay teenagers celebrating Mooncake festival with lanterns © age fotostock |
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Typical Chinese religious offerings on display on a table © Tan Lian Hock
The older generation still believe in setting up a table of offerings to pray to the moon on the 15th day of the 8th Lunar month. I remembered that soon after the first man landed on the moon, my siblings teased our Mum that she was praying now to Neil Armstrong’s footprint! She of course refused to believe that Neil Armstrong had taken “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”! Took us children awhile to convince her that Man has landed on the moon although the truth didn’t stop her from observing the tradition of praying to the full moon every year till she passed on.