The Origin of Moon Cake
Festival Moon cake comes from the Yuan Dynasty. During that time, people would not stand the cruel domination taking place, so many people staged uprisings to fight against the Yuan Dynasty rulers. Zhu Yuanzhang, the most prominent one, united all the people to start the uprisings. Unfortunately, government soldiers checked correspondences so strictly that it was hard for him to deliver messages to his fellow rebels. Soon the leader had a good idea: to hide messages in a cake to inform his people. Finally the uprising succeeded, and Zhu Yuanzhang designated the “message cake” as the main food in the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. From then on, moon cake has always played an important role in the festival’s celebrations.

Meaning of Moon Cake
Everyone will eat moon cakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Moon cake is the most traditional and important food in this holiday. It is round in shape, signifying family reunions and best wishes. That’s why people in China buy and send moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival. There are all kinds of moon cakes to choose from, and those hailing from Beijing, Suzhou, and Guangdong tend to be most popular. What’s especially important in moon cakes is the filling. The traditional fillings are sweetened bean paste, sesame, sugar and others. But now there are new fillings being invented all the time.

Modern Style Moon Cake
Recently, the concept of moon cake has been updated to incorporate better into our lives today. Let’s hear about some new styles of autumn moon cake:

冰淇淋月饼(bīngqílín yuèbĭng) Ice Cream Moon Cake
Ice cream moon cake is made completely of ice cream, and made to look just like moon cake. Although the festival happens in mid-autumn, the weather often stays fairly warm, so many people enjoy eating ice cream moon cake—especially kids.

保健月饼(bǎojiàn yuèbĭng) Health Food Moon Cake
Health food moon cake is a style of cake that is meant to benefit people’s health. It is made of many healthy ingredients such as ginseng, calcium, medicated food and other things that are good for health.

纳凉月饼(nàliáng yuèbĭng) Naliang Moon Cake
This is the latest creation of moon cake. Its fillings are made with lily, green bean or tea. All of them have a cooling effect on the body.

Source: http://www.echineselearning.com/newsletter/issue-22/yb.html

The Mid-Autumn Festival Moon Cake is one of the most enchanting nights on the East Asian calendar. Families in China, Malaysia and Singapore gather to give thanks, celebrate family unity, look at the full moon and enjoy a celebratory banquet.

The festival is an ancient Chinese tradition which commemorates China’s 14th-century uprising against Mongolian occupation. Rebels wrote the call to revolt on pieces of paper and embedded them in cakes which they smuggled to compatriots.

Today, in honour of this, people eat special yuek beng (moon cakes) – pastry crust filled with sugary fillings such as lotus seed paste or red bean paste. Coloured Chinese paper lanterns, traditionally in the shapes of animals, hang from almost every house.

The Moon festival (also called the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn festival) falls on September 22nd in the year 2010. What is the Moon festival? Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, the Chinese celebrate “zhong qiu jie.” Children are told the story of the moon fairy living in a crystal palace, who comes out to dance on the moon’s shadowed surface. The legend surrounding the “lady living in the moon” dates back to ancient times, to a day when ten suns appeared at once in the sky. The Emperor ordered a famous archer to shoot down the nine extra suns. Once the task was accomplished, Goddess of Western Heaven rewarded the archer with a pill that would make him immortal. However, his wife found the pill, took it, and was banished to the moon as a result. Legend says that her beauty is greatest on the day of the Moon festival.

Other Moon Festival Legends
According to another legend, on this day the “Man in the Moon” was spotted at an inn, carrying a writing tablet. When questioned, he said he was recording the names of all the happy couples who were fated to marry and live happily forever after. Accordingly, just as June is the traditional month for exchanging nuptials in the west, many Chinese weddings are held during the eighth lunar month, with the fifteenth day being the most popular.

Of course, the most famous legend surrounding the Moon festival concerns its possible role in Chinese history. Overrun by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the Chinese threw off their oppressors in 1368 AD. It is said that mooncakes – which the Mongols did not eat – were the perfect vehicle for hiding and passing along plans for the rebellion. Families were instructed not to eat the mooncakes until the day of the moon festival, which is when the rebellion took place. (In another version plans were passed along in mooncakes over several years of Mid-Autumn festivals, but the basic idea is the same).

How to Celebrate the Moon Festival
Today, Chinese people celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival with dances, feasting and moon gazing. Not to mention mooncakes. While baked goods are a common feature at most Chinese celebrations, mooncakes are inextricably linked with the Moon festival. One type of traditional mooncake is filled with lotus seed paste (see side photo). Roughly the size of a human palm, these mooncakes are quite filling, meant to be cut diagonally in quarters and passed around. This explains their rather steep price (around $5.00 in Canada). A word of caution: the salty yolk in the middle, representing the full moon, is an acquired taste.

More elaborate versions of autumn mooncakes contain four egg yolks (representing the four phases of the moon). Besides lotus seed paste, other traditional fillings include red bean paste and black bean paste. Unfortunately for dieters, mooncakes are rather high in calories.

While in the past mooncakes took up to four weeks to make, automation has speeded up the process considerably. Today, mooncakes may be filled with everything from dates, nuts, and fruit to Chinese sausages. More exotic creations include green tea mooncakes, and ping pei or snowskin mooncakes, a Southeast Asian variation made with cooked glutinous rice flour. Haagen-Daz has even gotten into the act by introducing a line of ice cream mooncakes in Asian markets.

Given the difficulty of making them, most people prefer to purchase their mooncakes instead of making them. You’ll find them at Asian bakeries beginning around mid-August. Meanwhile, for those with a culinary bent, here are several recipes.

Source: http://www.eslvoice.com/community/entertainment/ent_view.php?uid=226

In Singapore, celebrations of the Festival Mooncake is concentrated on the Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival. From September to October, Chinatown—the beating heart of the Chinese in Singapore—is transformed into an extravaganza of shimmering lights, themed lanterns, street bazaars, and stage shows, all to pay homage to a festival that reaches back into the very roots of Chinese culture.

On 11 September 2010, visitors can join the rest of Singapore in witnessing the official light-up and opening ceremony. Chinatown will be enhanced with radiant festive lights and glimmering lanterns lining the streets, a display that will continue until 15 October 2010. You can also pick up a lantern for yourself at the street bazaar (8 September till 22 September 2010)—ranging from the traditional paper-and-candles type to plastic varieties modelled after cartoon characters.

With a lantern in hand, join in the mass lantern walk on 18 September 2010, which promises to turn the streets into a dazzling procession of lights. The street bazaar also offers a multitude of traditional goodies like pomelos, Chinese tea, and most of all, Autumn moon cakes.

For the culinary adventurous and budding gourmands, sample scrumptious mooncakes (a rectangular box or circle shape thick pastry dough filled with yummy ingredients) in traditional flavours like lotus and egg yolk or exotic varieties like durian, chocolate, coffee and ice-cream.

Staged shows will also be performed every night from 8 September 2010 to 22 September 2010, and remember to make way for dragon dancers offstage as they weave their way through a season of reunion and revelry.

Singapore Mooncake Festival or Mid autumn festival, while a widely celebrated event in Singapore, is not a public holiday.

Source : http://sgholiday.com/2010/08/singapore-mooncake-festival-2010/