I am sure everyone is very familiar with this evergreen number by the late Teresa Teng. It is a very popular Mandarin karaoke favourite…but if you haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about, you can click on this link to listen to it. Gerrie, you should watch too…as this version is by your heartthrob and it will surely make you go all weak in the knees. Ewek! Ewek! Hahahahahaha!!!!
Anyway, somehow or other, this song comes to mind everytime the Mooncake Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, draws near. This year, it will fall on Sunday, the 14th of September. There are a lot of folklore and fairytales surrounding this auspicious occasion but the story that I read when I was young was about the Chinese uprising against the Mongols. At the time, there was a Mongol in every Chinese household and they had to feed and serve him…and a message was circulated among all the Chinese in the mooncakes to kill the Mongol in the house.
I guess the main attraction of this festival every year is the eating of mooncakes…..
When we were young, we would eat those square Foochow mooncake biscuits or the local made ones with very thick skin and very black tau sar (bean paste) but these had taken a back seat ever since we started getting those nicer ones from West Malaysia (Tai Thong and what not!) – fine lotus paste with very nice and thin skin AND salted eggs! I never bought the local ones after that! This one is from Baker’s Cottage…..
I do not know the actual price; my missus bought a couple of boxes while she was in KL last week (I most certainly would not do a thing like that!!). I just ate them! But browsing through a direct sale catalogue, it seems that the cheapest is RM6.50 each and the price can go well beyond RM10.00. Gee! At that price, I think I’ll just go back to the local made ones…more for the sake of preserving the culture and tradition than anything else. After all, they’re not really THAT fantastic…to the extent that I would give an arm or a leg just to have a bite!
In fact, the local bakeries here do make some pretty nice varieties…
These are only RM7.50 for six – pandan flavour with salted egg…
They’re rather nice and I’m sure it makes more sense to eat these instead, especially in the face of the current escalating prices of things. I, for one, will not be buying any from across the South China Sea and if everyone will follow suit, it may serve to teach those cut-throats a good lesson!
RM6.50 per mooncake! I’d sooner have these Sibu Foochow sio bee sold at 5 for RM2.00…
or this bowl of Sarawak laksa at Peter’s (opposite Courts Mammoth) at Sg Antu here in Sibu…
…with freshwater prawns…
for only…you will never believe this…RM3.00. So, all you daylight robbers over there can keep all your mooncakes and shove them up ur *****!!! Thank you very much!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 