It is a Moon Festival or a Cake Festival?

Along with hairy crabs, mooncakes are another dining must during the Middle Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival, which falls on September 25 this year.

Family members will have a get-together on that day, enjoying sumptuous dinners and appreciating the big, round, bright moon.

Mooncakes are round to imitate the full moon during the festival.

Three kinds of traditional mooncakes can be found in Shanghai, Suzhou style, Guangzhou style and Chaozhou style. Ice cream companies like Hagen-Daz have also created their own take on the traditional treat.

The filings in the three traditional styles of mooncake differ greatly.

Suzhou style mooncake is filled with fresh pork and should be eaten while they are still warm. Reheated cakes just don’t taste nearly as good.

Winny Wang, a female writer with the online department of Shanghai Daily, said one of her schoolmates wrote in her blog that “the Suzhou-style mooncake should be eaten right after they are taken out of the oven.”

Guangzhou style mooncakes are the most common. They look thick and dry, but they are very easy to store, unlike some ice-cream mooncake.

However, their thick paste is “unpalatable” for many reporters in the newsroom.

“We hate the nuts pastes,” said Winny, Lydia Chen and Kelly Chen (no, they are not relatives), while Martin Guo, head of the online department said the nut pastes are ok for him.

That’s probably a difference between men and women.

Red beans are the favorite paste for the girls but Stu, a foreign language expert with the newspaper, said he “hates everything with red bean paste.”

That’s probably a difference between Chinese and foreigners.

As for the Chaozhou style mooncake, it’s not as popular in the city as it is in China’s southern provinces.

They look flatter than the Guangzhou style ones and their original pastes are made from watermelon.

Lydia was shocked by a picture of an extremely luxurious mooncake that was published in today’s Xinmin Evening News.

The cake sets —with a bun in the middle of 500 grams of pure silver, one gram of pure gold and seven natural gems – sell for 8,800 yuan (US$1,171) each.

Only 2,005 sets are available.

“I cannot understand why there should be silver, gold and gems on a piece of mooncake,” Lydia said. “What are they for?”

Leo Zhang, a business reporter, said it’s ok to use mooncake as a gift during the festival rather than eat them, but he preferred to receive or send ordinary mooncake sets that cost no more than 300 yuan.

“A small gift shows big affection,” he said.