happy mid autumn festival

today is my favorite chinese holiday, the mid-autumn festival. all you need to know is that on this holiday, you look at the moon from your windowsill and eat moon cakes, the famous yuebing. and you get a day off work to do this. what could be better than that?

mooncakes are so revered in china that they recently have been tied to corruption--high end mooncakes are often purchased by greedy chinese businessmen using public funds. after taking measures to stamp this out, luxury mooncake sales dropped 12%. i mean, if you're going to have corruption, at least it is over mooncakes and not something less savory, no pun intended :)

i found an interesting post today about the waste involved with mooncakes. it's an interesting look into the characteristics of china's consumer culture.

okay, i'm off to get my mooncakes at the only chinese bakery in chinatown. i hope they have my favorite, mung bean mooncake.