4 Flavours Mooncakes With Fruits And Flower Arrangement

A basket of cheerful flowers with 5 varieties fruits and 4 flavours mooncakes.

BEIJING – The beloved national tradition of nibbling sweet pastry mooncakes and admiring the fullness of the harvest moon in the Mid-Autumn, or Moon, Festival has been hit by China’s runaway inflation, forcing vendors to opt for frugal variations of the rich treat.
The round pastries eaten and given away as gifts during the lunar festival, which this year falls on Wednesday, have fallen prey to inflationary pressures along with all other food products. Annual inflation in China hit an 11-year high of 6.5% in August, raising fears of rapid erosion of living standards and potential social unrest.

Producers of mooncakes have found themselves in a bind. As China’s food prices have soared, the cost of raw materials to produce the cakes has increased by 15-30% too. But worried that surging prices could touch off unrest across the country, the government has issued stern edicts warning against price gouging and dictated that the prices of the traditional treat should be kept stable.

Once splurging on luxurious packaging of wood, silk and even gold to entice their customers to choose from a tantalizing variety of mooncakes, vendors now have to reduce production costs by settling for plain and down-to-earth packaging.

Many producers, including such established brands as Holliland and Guixiangcun, have joined a government-supported initiative to revive the traditional spirit of the Mid-Autumn Festival by packaging their cakes in environment-friendly recycled paper.

Others, still hoping to offset the higher prices of manufacturing, have opted for pairing the cakes with health supplements, trumpeting a new, “green” way of celebrating the centuries-old tradition.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is believed to commemorate a Chinese uprising against the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Plotting to overthrow the Mongol government, Chinese conspirators exchanged secret messages about the day of the rebellion written on slips of paper and hidden inside mooncakes. The uprising, which brought down the Yuan Dynasty, took place on the 15th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar.

Long void of its rebellious meaning, the Mid-Autumn Festival has come to celebrate the end of the summer harvest season when the moon is closest to the Earth. Families would gather together to enjoy the beauty of the full harvest moon and snack on little cakes with a round shape that imitates its fullness.

The small pastries with a thick, sticky filling either of lotus seed or red bean paste are so rich in taste that tradition dictates they have to be cut into slivers and consumed with sips of tea.

This accompaniment has inspired several companies to include brands of famous Chinese tea in gift packs for the festival. A packet of aged Pu’er tea – China’s mystery tea famous for its health-giving benefits (see The bubble bursts for Pu’er tea, Asia Times Online, June 26 – added to a simply adorned box of mooncakes has become the hot trend of this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, according to several vendors.

“It is only natural that as people become more concerned about their health and well-being, they prefer healthful selections of mooncakes rather than any of the modern versions that are so rich and fattening,” said Zhu Yanhua, a saleswoman for Holliland mooncakes staffing a stall in front of supermarket in suburban Beijing.

Recent years have witnessed the rise and fall of fashions in trendy new cakes made in every imaginable style: ice-cream mooncakes marketed and sold weeks ahead of the festival by ice-cream giant Haagen-Dazs, chocolate mooncakes produced by Belgian chocolatiers, jelly mooncakes and even foie gras and champagne mooncakes.

But the explosion of taste varieties is only part of the mooncake-transformation story. Purists have deplored what they call the fashion of waste and decadence, which has dictated ever more elaborate and pricey packaging year by year.

The Chinese press has reported about resourceful producers in the central city of Zhengzhou who came up with mooncakes made of silver and adorned with 56 precious stones selling at a price of 6,900 yuan (US$920).

Not to be outdone, their counterparts in the northern city of Changchun produced a 1,800-yuan mooncakes box containing also a golf club, while mooncake makers in Yunnan province have also managed to pack a digital camera in with the traditional pastries.

“Such travesties have caused the degeneration of mooncakes as a symbol of family reunion during the harvest season,” argued Beijing Youth Daily columnist Pang Hongqi. “These are no longer family mooncakes but by-products of a vulgar gift-bearing culture”.
Announcing their price-cutting campaign to sell mooncakes in simple, recycled paper rather than lavish wrappings and boxes, government officials have tried to present the current inflation as a crisis with a silver lining. The packaging drive will help spread the concepts of frugality, rationality and health, Liu Jian, a marketing official with the Beijing municipal bureau of commerce, told the Xinhua News Agency.

“Luxurious packages not only distort the meaning of mooncakes but are necessarily wasteful,” he was quoted as saying.

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/II26Ad01.html

The annual Mid-Autumn Festival will be here soon, and Grand Hyatt Taipei has prepared a series of traditional moon-cakes and delicate gift packages to celebrate this special occasion. All the moon-cakes are hand-made using only the finest ingredients, and are presented an elegant box, making them a great gift or perfect to be kept for one’s own enjoyment.

This year, Grand Hyatt Taipei has incorporated six healthy ingredients into its moon-cakes, namely- walnuts, red bean paste, lotus seed paste, mixed nuts, chestnuts and dried scallops, creating exquisite flavours. In addition to the traditional date paste with walnuts, red bean paste with dried longans and lotus seed paste with salty egg yolk, three innovative flavours – mixed nuts with dried fruit, mocha with chestnuts and premium dried scallops – are also available.

The Grand Hyatt Moon-cake Gift Box (6 pieces in different flavours) is priced at NT$980; the Deluxe Moon-cake Gift Box (2 pieces in different flavours) is priced at NT$880. Orders will be taken from today and must be placed in advance.

Orders for mooncake boxes are accepted from today; please note that orders must be placed in advance. Orders received before 15 August are entitled to a special 15% discount per box. A total spend of over NT$30,000 will be entitled to a 20% discount and free delivery, while orders for 20 to 49 boxes enjoy a10% discount, those for from 50 to 99 boxes receive a 15% discount and those for more than 100 boxes are entitled to a 20% discount. The delivery fee for outside the Greater Taipei area is calculated based on quantity and distance; for example, delivery to the same address in the Greater Taipei area costs NT$250 per eight boxes. For more information or to place an order, contact our Food & Beverage Sales Department on (02)2720-1200 ext. 3198 or 3199, or visit ww.grandhyatttaipie.com.tw

Source: http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1341662&lang=eng_news&cate_img=240.jpg&cate_rss=news_Supplement