International student Fahad Kabeer pressed a green dough the size of a ping pong ball in a wooden mold and tapped the mold up and down on the worktop a few times after the dough was shaped into a mooncake. Then the mooncake fell. The motif on it, printed by the mold, turned out to be the Chinese character Fu.
In Chinese, Fu means happiness, good luck, and good wishes. And this one was even more special, as it was selected from a piece of calligraphy by Bada Shanren, a Chinese ink-wash painter born in the 1620s in Nanchang in east China’s Jiangxi Province.
“I’ve been in China for seven years and have spent many Mid-Autumn Festivals. Every year, the school gives us mooncakes, but this is the first time I’ve ever made mooncakes with my own hands, and with such a Chinese flavor,” said Fahad from Pakistan.
Having studied at the Jiangxi University of Chinese Medicine in Jiangxi for over seven years, Fahad has had many mooncakes, a traditional pastry for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and prefers the type with mixed nuts and dried fruits, but he has always been curious about the story behind the custom.
The friend who brought Fahad to experience the mooncake DIY told him that Chinese people print auspicious designs on mooncakes, which are then shared during the Mid-Autumn Festival, symbolizing that the blessings are also shared with friends and relatives.
In the past, people used to make mooncakes in wooden molds, which carry the very simple thoughts and values of the Chinese people as well as the hopes for a better life, and combine life with art, and their charm have not diminished through years, added Fahad’s friend.
Before turning his handmade mooncakes over to the chef for baking, Fahad video-called his families in Pakistan. “In my country Pakistan, we don’t have the Mid-Autumn Festival, but we have festivals like the Eid al-Fitr, also a family reunion festival,” he said.
With a mooncake in his left hand and his mobile in the right, he said to his father: “Dad, this is the mooncake I made just now. I want to share it with you. I wish one day I will make these mooncakes at home, and we all family members will eat together. I miss you all.”
Besides the character, Fahad noticed that the molds also included the motif of a rabbit.
“This is one of the Mid-Autumn tales of the jade rabbit. The image of a personified rabbit is often seen on Mid-Autumn mooncakes. It is usually pestling medicinal materials,” the pastry chef Min Dengbin told Fahad.
The full moon has been the spiritual support of the Chinese during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in Chinese legends, there was a goddess in the moon palace, who owned a jade rabbit that could pestle medicines, which represents the hope for longevity, Min said.
