Beijing, part two.
The timing worked out that we happened to be in Beijing for the Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Mooncake Festival. This is significant not only because we had the opportunity to witness and enjoy a significant cultural event, but also because it sounded a lot like there was gonna be cake.
Ming picked up that I was excited about this Mid-Autumn Festival, mostly because I kept slipping and calling it "Cake Day", and she pulled out her very best American analogies to talk me in off the cake ledge.
"In America, you have fruitcake? Yes?" Crap. Yeah. We have fruitcake. "The mooncake is like the fruitcake in China. You give it? And it's nice? But no one likes to eat it." She made a blick face there to punctuate. Mooncake is bad.
"Not all mooncake is bad," our regional guide piped up. "Some kinds aren't very bad."
"Ming, what's your favorite kind of mooncake?" I asked.
This required kind of a ridiculously long conversation with the regional guide in Chinese, I don't know what was going on there. Then she turned back to me, her hand on her chin. She squinted her eyes appraisingly.
"I try to figure out what kind of mooncake you will like best," she told me. I sat up straighter. I felt like I was about to get my cards read. She tapped her chin and thought.
"Okay, which do you like better: bean paste or soy curd?"
Oh. Wow. Okay. We're in a whoooooole other spectrum of "cake", now, aren't we.
"I like... strawberries?"
Ming nodded, satisfied. "I think you will like the bean paste."
Uh, and I think we need to work on our negotiating skills. The only thing bean paste and strawberries have in common is their inability to get along.
The hotel left complimentary mooncakes in our room that night; Ming told us to eat the mooncake while looking up at the moon and thinking about our families. I'd already eaten a mooncake when pressed at dinner so I was pretty sure that if I ate a mooncake and thought of my family, my family would be filled with an instant yet mysterious sense of annoyance. So I packed it instead and brought it home. One of these days I'm going to frost it and try and convince Randy it's a cupcake. And then I will pack my shit and go.
5 Comments
Reader Comments (5)
I would like to state for the record that I make a really good chocolate cake with bean curd. Serious.
Naaaaaaah. You don't.
I have tried to like mooncake and failed.
I would prefer your cake any day, Kelly. I'll bet you can't taste the tofu, and that makes all the difference!
Oh my goodness, girl. You're too funny. I love your blog.
that story cracked me up