People in Chinatown love geppei(Chinese moon cake) !?

One of China's traditional annual events is the mid-autumn festival. Falling on August 15 on the lunar calendar, this is a day on which Chinese give thanks for the harvests of crops on which they have spent time and effort growing since spring. During the festival, they also pray for a peaceful family life, and eat a variety of different moon cake. The ultimates in these confections are those containing duck eggs. Some of the larger moon cake contain two or three duck eggs. By duck eggs, we refer only to the yokes, which show their faces out of the black bean paste and appear to be the moon floating lightly across the night sky. For the Chinese, this is the most popular treat of all.

In Yokohama Chinatown, a wide range of variously-shaped moon cake are sold even after the mid-autumn festival ends. These include moon cake with jujube or lotus in bean jam, and other varieties of nuts. Although people in this town are not particularly fonder of moon cake than people elsewhere, it is sold here year-round. Among Chinatown's many gift items, moon cake are perennial favorites. One of the best-kept secrets of this town is that one can buy all types of moon cake here at any time.

Japan also has a custom of celebrating the autumn full moon by offering rice cakes, decorated by pampas grass tassels, on the 15th night of August under the lunar calendar. Why not try offering moon cake on this occasion?


E-mail:intlyoke@iris.or.jp


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