Random thoughts about moon cakes

This year the economy is difficult, up to this point there is still no sight of the sky above and moon cake stalls below like every year.

In previous years, any empty space on the street was used as a cake stall. In front of famous shops, customers lined up to squeeze each other. Dong Phuong moon cake shop on Cau Dat street in Hai Phong was still congested even though it was one-way, and police had to be on duty to regulate traffic.

The economic difficulties are partly due to changes in people's awareness and consciousness about moon cakes. Many people realize the waste of buying, giving, and presenting moon cakes to each other.

Packaging and advertising costs have pushed the price of moon cakes beyond their real value. Illustrative photo.

In reality, people's lives, especially in big cities, are mostly full, their daily food intake has excess nutrients and calories, if they are sedentary, they can easily get opportunistic diseases, high cholesterol, diabetes, so moon cakes with very high sugar and fat content are no longer the choice and priority like in the past when everyone just looked forward to the Mid-Autumn Festival to eat moon cakes.

Moon cakes are the dream of children in the past, the most important item on the moon-watching tray during the full moon festival. The baked cake has fatty and fragrant char siu, sweet pumpkin jam, fragrant chicken floss, lemon leaves mixed together, and rich lotus seeds. The soft, fragrant sticky rice cake has sweet bean filling, one bite and the aftertaste lingers in the mouth.

When autumn comes, I am often impressed because besides buying toys such as star lanterns and burning grapefruit seeds to carry lanterns, my father often prepares a pair of grass ducks, a pair of moon cakes, a dozen persimmons, and some puffed rice to give to my grandmother. My grandfather passed away a long time ago, so only my grandmother remains. My father often puts things in a green aluminum box that my uncle brought back from the army, so that every time he comes to give gifts, my grandmother will exclaim that so many gifts are a waste. Then he catches chickens, measures out rice for my father to bring back, as well as potatoes, vegetables, and corn kernels.

To me, Mid-Autumn Festival is a moon-watching festival for children to enjoy playing under the bright moonlight, to see the “sun, moon and universe” in their sight. For adults, it is an occasion to show gratitude to grandparents and parents with familiar but flavorful and seasonal items.

From that good tradition, then when the economy developed, relationships of thanks and indebtedness to each other waited until Tet, the time was too long, people needed an intermediate period to maintain the relationship and then gradually moon cakes were mainly for businesses to give to officials, places, business relationships and waste began.

No matter how delicious moon cakes are, they are fatty and sweet, and get boring quickly. No one can eat them continuously every week, so people started producing cakes with ingredients that are far from traditional cakes such as shark fin, bird's nest, abalone, salmon eggs, sea cucumber, ginseng, almonds, macadamia nuts... to increase the luxury of the cake.

The cake box is beautifully designed and printed, unique, accompanied by a premium tea or famous wine bottle, pushing the value of the cake box up to millions of dong. The cost of advertising, marketing, packaging, and commission discounts keep increasing, making the actual value of the cake only account for a small part of the total.

For many officials, the kitchen is full of cakes, so how can they eat them all? Even if they give them away, they can't finish them all. Every guest who comes to their house opens the box and cuts the cake. The guest is so impressed that he sips a little with tea and then leaves it there. The host is scared when he sees the cake and throws it away. Cake boxes cost hundreds of thousands, expensive ones cost millions or even millions, and are thrown away like that, such a waste. The cake boxes are very beautiful, but they can't be used or reused, except to make boxes for children's toys, and after a while they are thrown away.

Bringing mooncakes to the workplace for everyone to consume in the style of “if they are not delicious, they will be gone in a house with many children” is not good either. Women are afraid of gaining weight, men do not like sweets, mooncakes are not snacks or other types of snacks that can be easily consumed in the office. Many boxes of expensive cakes just sit there waiting for the expiration date and then are thrown away in a very wasteful way.

In many places, when it comes to Mid-Autumn Festival, giving a box of mooncakes is like showing them relief and their responsibility is over. In places that require deeper relationships, there are even envelopes, but the mooncakes that were once the dream of children, and are still the dream of poor children in remote areas, are pitifully rejected.

So is it necessary to produce so many moon cakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival? Just changing the habits of shopping, using and consuming will reduce the waste of shiny moon cake boxes. In fact, industrial moon cakes with pureed fillings, no one can tell what ingredients the filling is made from, only a slight smell of taro or mung bean, like a ball of baked dough with flavoring that no longer has the soul of moon cakes.

This year, it will gradually decrease, next year it will decrease, then gradually moon cakes will no longer be a responsibility to give away, and will return to their original value. From an economic perspective, a small part of the cake production and business will suffer losses, but it is better than producing and then wasting. If there is an organization that receives those unused cake boxes, collects them, and then distributes them to children in remote areas before the Mid-Autumn Festival, then perhaps "the whole family will be happy".

According to diendandoanhnghiep.vn

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