Mooncakes

Yesterday was Mid-Autumn festival here. Some people also called this
"mooncake festival". Mooncakes are small round cakes that people give
to their friends and family on the day of the festival. Sam and I
knew that these cakes were something special because at every bakery,
grocery store, and nice restaurant you could see mooncakes advertised.
At first I was a little leary of these cakes. Usually what the
chinese call "cake" tastes like lightly sweetened thick bread to me.
But one night a friend cut up one of these small cakes into tiny
pieces so everyone could have a taste. It was actually sweet! I also
thought it tasted pretty good with a cup of tea. So the next time I
was at the grocery store I decided to buy three different flavors to
see what they tasted like. Some mooncakes can be as cheap as 7 rmb (a
little over one u.s. dollar) or they can be as expensive as over 100
rmb (about 14 or 15 u.s. dollars). The ones I bought were 7 rmb. The
first one we tried was sesame flavor. It wasn't too sweet but it
wasn't that tasty either. The second was a strange flavor that we
couldn't get used to. The third one we didn't bother eating because
we already had had our fill. Little did we know that we would be
given more mooncakes than we every could want from friends and parents
of the children we teach. Some were the expensive kind, some tasted
like the ones we had eaten before, and some were flavors that sounded
good but then were not quite what you were expecting. The chocolate
one was good if you weren't wanting it to taste like chocolate. The
most standard one looks and tastes like sweet potato with an egg in
it. What one of my student's mom said sums up my feelings about moon
cakes: "The first couple are good but after that you don't feel like
eating anymore for a long time."