中秋节 is one of only a few major holidays in China and most of the country has a week off from school and work. 200 million people are expected to be traveling over the next week to vacation and visit family and to eat mooncakes.
We don't expect to receive many mooncakes this year.
If anything, we should be giving the things to other people because that's what you do in this season - give piles and piles of mooncakes to bosses and teachers and people you want to impress. The more expensive, the better.
But we're foreigners, so we're exempt from some of these traditional guanxi building activities. And besides - we're way too late in the season to get our hands on any of those Haagen Daz ice cream mooncakes, as one must get one's order in months ahead of time.
Mooncakes are kind of pretty.
And they are traditionally filled with red bean paste, or lotus paste, or some other paste-y substance, sometimes with a salted duck egg in the middle. Because you know - it looks like the full moon.
The thing is - apart from the giving and the sharing and the general good feeling mooncakes impart, I have yet to meet a Chinese person who likes to eat them.
Except, of course, for the Haagen Daz ones. Which are basically overpriced ice cream sandwiches and my high school language partner argues that they aren't really mooncakes in the first place. She doesn't like mooncakes either.
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