Vietnam’s Mid-Autumn Moon Festival “Moon Cakes”

Vietnam’s Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Bánh Trung Thu (“Moon Cakes”)

Are Mid-Autumn Moon Festival “Moon Cakes” Vietnam’s Christmas  “Fruit Cakes”?

I think maybe so.

Everyone gets one (or many) Bánh Trung Thu as gifts for the holiday.  And so many are never unboxed.  Instead, special friends pass them along as special holiday gifts to other special friends?

Now, certainly many Vietnamese folk must love moon cakes – literally millions are sold each year in Vietnam as the mid-Autumn Festival arrives.  But, I’ve never actually seen a Vietnamese friend go out and buy one to consume it for themselves. (I’ll await the onslaught of e-mails).  And I’ve seen plenty of boxes of moon cakes sit untouched, week after week, on friends’ kitchen counters until, of course, I – a foreigner – arrive for a visit and am told, You must try a moon cake.

Of course, I do.  And  certainly, I really have nothing against sitting down eating a heavy brick for the holidays.  After all, it’s tradition!

But it must be eaten in very small slices. And best consumed over the course of the several days surrounding the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival .

Almost always heavy (thus my eating a brick reference), the ingredients comprising a moon cake varies from bakery-to-bakery, and from family-to-family.  I’ve encountered numerous filling variations, involving bean pastes, ground seeds and nuts, salted egg yolk, dried fruits and shredded meats.

So you might be curious and ask  just what is this holiday that requires eating this special food?

According to my understanding from Vietnamese friends (as well as from Wikipedia), the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival recounts the legend of Cuội, whose wife accidentally urinated on a sacred banyan tree, taking Cuội with the sacred banyan tree to the Moon. Every year, on the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival , children light lanterns and participate in a procession to show Cuội the way back to Earth.

So, there you have it.  Why not eat a heavy brick-like pastry to help celebrate the memory of an accidental urination on a sacred tree. Makes so much sense!

Now, of course, I’m being a bit facetious.  There is, in fact, a very good reason that moon cakes are so popular and exchanged widely across Vietnam.  You see, it’s what’s UNDER the moon cake!

COLD, HARD CASH!

It seems that mid-level managers and government bureaucrats in Vietnam can help ensure their personal career advancement, by simply placing cash in the moon cake gift box (or associated envelope) and presenting it at Mid-Autumn Moon Festival time to their superiors.  The larger the cash denominations, the more certain one can be of a successful career!  It’s tradition!

But, cynicism aside, there are two great aspects to the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival here in Vietnam.

One is the children’s holiday processions and Lion Dances.  They can be colorful, sweet or loud, and great fun:

And secondly, and perhaps more exciting, is the recent development of a NEW moon cake tradition.  I think this can best be understood in photos:

I LOVE THE MID-AUTUMN MOON FESTIVAL … Enjoy Everyone!