Mooncake festival

Yesterday was the 15th day of the Chinese lunar month. Traditionally on this day, we would celebrate the Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival. There are legends surrounding this festival, mostly centering on the fairy in the moon but for too many years already, the Chinese people are now more realistic. There is no life on the moon, let alone fairies. Yet we still celebrate this festival today but it is more of a cultural tradition than anything else. So there I was again at the Swee Cheok Tong (Seh Quah Kongsi) to worship at the altars of our resident deities and also the ancestral tablets. As per our practice, each of us - the trustees and committee members that attended - were given a box of mooncakes. This year, I requested the Treasurer to include a Ngor Jeen or assorted nuts mooncake in my box. This mooncake flavour has become out of favour in the past years as more imaginative and innovative fillings take over. These newer fillings are not to my liking though, as they do not taste any better than the traditional ones, Yet if the mooncake festival needs to survive, there must certainly be revamps to the mooncakes themselves.