四海为家

A few days ago, China celebrated 中秋节, the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the Chinese traditionally eat mooncakes while reciting poetry and admiring the full moon with friends and relatives. In the weeks leading up to the holiday, mooncakes are a popular gift for friends, co-workers, employees, and people with whom you’d like to have good 关系 (guanxi, a good relationship).

Starbucks mooncakes

I read an interesting blogpost that described the informal “mooncake exchange” that springs up every year in Shanghai in the weeks leading up to the holiday. Many employees apparently receive mooncake vouchers from their companies, which brokers then offer to buy at discounted prices, and in turn sell on to others who would like to give mooncakes as gifts but don’t want to pay the ridiculous prices that the major brands charge. The broker might buy the vouchers for 50% of their face value and then sell them on for 70% of the face value, for example, and the buy and sell prices probably fluctuate as the holiday approaches, after which the mooncakes lose their gift value.

Mooncake prices in themselves are an interesting phenomenon. Here in Wuhan, the cheapest cost just a few yuan, or are sold by weight at 9 or 12 yuan a 斤 (jin, equivalent to 500 g). The most  expensive, fancy boxes of four or five mooncakes from famous brands, can easily cost several hundred yuan per box (I believe the Starbucks mooncake set, with four small mooncakes, costs 328 yuan — the picture on the right is from their website). Some of the price difference might be justified by better quality and taste, but most of the price is supported by the fact that everyone knows the cost of mooncakes from the major brands and the gift is valued accordingly.

And as for the taste? Maybe not worth Starbucks prices, but the “Sushi” flavored mooncakes my boyfriend got from his co-teacher were actually surprisingly good, and without even a hint of fish (Sushi was probably the bakery’s attempt to write 苏式 in English, which in this case I assume would mean Suzhou style, or possible Su family style). Definitely a tradition worth keeping.