More than mooncakes in Hangzhou

The Mid-Autumn Festival arrives on Sunday and most people think about mooncakes or yuebing, which are round like the moon and represent togetherness and family reunions.

The festival, a harvest feast, originated in worship and appreciation of the moon. Mooncakes were not only snacks, but also offerings to the moon.

Mooncakes can be sweet or savory and filled with many ingredients, nuts, seeds, dates, lily root paste, meat, egg, yolk, which symbolizes unity. Varieties are endless.

But mooncakes are only part of a traditional Mid-Autumn Festival dinner.

In Hangzhou, which has a long history and rich food culture, traditional festival dishes included one very unusual mooncake not found elsewhere, as well as other specialties, many of them not familiar to people today.

Shanghai Daily describes four lesser-known traditional foods that used to be essential in Hangzhou for the Mid-Autumn Festival family dinner.

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