Moon Cake

Every traditional Chinese Food would relate to festival days which also come with Chinese myth stories. As the moon cake was related to the Mid-Autumn Festival, which was also in the Chinese calendar, the 15^th of August. As I had mentioned before, every festival comes from a Chinese myth story, and there are so many different versions, but the very well known one for Mid-Autumn Festival Myth begins with nine suns in the sky, the soil was cracking, plants and animals were dead, people were having a hard time to survive, and there was no rain for the whole year. There was one gentlemen call Ho Yi, he was a strong man, he used his archery shoot eight of the suns, and there was only one left. After that, plants growing again, animals come back, and the citizens recommended Ho Yi to be their King to rule the country. And Gods in the heaven very appreciated what Ho Yi had done for the Human; they gave Ho Yi an immortal medicine for reward. Ho Yi got a beautiful wife, Chang E, she was curious about Ho Yi’s immortal medicine. One day, she went into Ho Yi’s room and found the medicine, Ho Yi saw it, and yell at her, Chang E got scare, she did not know what to do, and she swallow the medicine. Ho Yi was so mad, and he wanted to kill her, Ho Yi was shooting Chang E with his arrows, all the sudden, Chang E flew to the heaven, and one of the God save Chang E’s life. She could not go back to where she used to lived, because Ho Yi is going to kill her, but the God still need to punish her for stealing the medicine, since she is half human, half god, they send her to the moon and never come out. Nowadays, people would buy moon cake to remember the story between Ho Yi and Chang E. The moon cake looks like a moon, some of them are round it, and some of them are squares, they have egg yolk in the moon cake. Even the color and the egg yolk shape looks like the moon, that’s why we call it moon cake.

zong zi

As we live in the U.S., a very diverse country, people would know about the very traditional food from other countries. Dim Sum was famous knowing for Chinese food, Pho is Vietnamese food, Sushi is Japanese food, and Taco would be Mexican food. Even we lived in this diverse country, not many people know about the traditional Chinese food, Zong zi. Zong zi made from sausage, peanuts, beans, pork, and egg in the middle, surrounded by glutinous rice, and wrapped by bamboo leaves, tied with strings. It is very delicious food, Chinese usually eat Zong zi during May 5^th (Chinese calendar, there are difference between the Chinese calendar and the calendar we daily use, that’s why we have two birthday, one on the Chinese calendar and the other one would be the day on the calendar we use.) It was a story about this delicious Zong zi, we called that day Dragon Boat Festival. This story was about a well educated poet, Qu Yuan, who worked for the Chu Empire (Chu is a country) during 340 A.D. as a governor, but blame for threaten the Empire by the evil governor who envied about Qu Yuan’s intelligence, the Empire fired him, and he still wanted to help his country, tried to convince the Empire don’t make agreement with Qin Empire (Qin is a country), because he noticed that Qin Empire was not really want to make peace with Chu Empire, he wanted to take over the country, but Chu Empire did not listen to Qu Yuan, and Qin Empire did take over Chu’s country after Chu Empire sent Qu Yuan out the country. Qu Yuan felt so painful because he lost his country, he could not help to safe the country, and he jump into a river (mi luo jiang is the name of the river). Every other family knows about the story, they cry cry cry for Qu Yuan, and they did not want the fishes to eat Qu Yuan’s body, he wanted to protect Qu Yuan’s body, they put rice in the river, the fishes would eat the rice instead of Qu Yuan’s body. And they rowed boats out to the river tried to find Qu Yuan. Later on, people came up with the Zong zi. Now, every year, then Dragon Boat Festival comes, people would go out row boats and eat Zong zi, so we won’t forget about Qu Yuan.