Mid - Autumn Festival

Autumn's slowly setting in - no more sultry humid days. The weather's cooler and slowly we'll have the colors of Autumn everywhere.
According to the Chinese Lunar calendar, Mid - autumn festival falls on the 12th of September this year.

Every Chinese person you come across, will be carrying bright red colored boxes filled with mooncakes to gift friends and family.
Mooncakes , also called Yue bing was traditionally cake with egg yolk at the centre which represented the Fullmoon. On this day, they say, it's when the Moon appears the largest.

Apart from the traditional red bean filling, you can also find - chocolate, strawberry and even coffee flavoured mooncakes at supermarkets. Coldstone and Häagen-Dazs also serve ice cream moon cakes -sans the cake ofcourse! :-)
 
On the mooncake there are traditional chinese characters imprinted which is usually the mark of the bakery it's prepared at , but now keeping up with Modern china, these days you even get Angry bird mooncakes!

The new obsession for the Chinese is the Angry birds game. Footpaths are filled with stuffed toys, mouse pads, fridge magnets, tshirts, what not!

But, did you know that the Chinese claim that the birds resemble an owl shaped brown vessel that is on display at the Shanxi museum?

Hope you all enjoy the awesome weather and have our share of mooncakes, as we are off to India on a nice long holiday! Can't wait :)

**Picture source - Internet