The Baihe Xunwei Creative Culinary Workshop in Jinhua offers various mooncakes with traditional designs. [Photo/jinhua.com.cn]
As Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, a variety of creative mooncakes are hitting the market.
Workers at the Baihe Xunwei Creative Culinary Workshop in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, were busy crafting handmade mooncakes on Sept 15. The patterns include the traditional scene of lotus ponds under the moonlight and local symbols like Jinhua ham and opera facial makeup.
Wang Lijuan, a representative inheritor of local intangible cultural heritage, said that this year's collection drew inspiration from Jinhua's Wuju Opera. "More and more people, especially the young, love Wuju Opera, so we want to show Jinhua's culture on the mooncakes," Wang explained.
The workshop offers six varieties, combining classic flavors such as jujube-walnut with bold new fillings including red beans, Longjing tea, ham, and beef with rattan pepper. All are crafted by hand, with just 40 to 50 mooncakes finished by a worker each day.
Wang said that they shared pictures of their mooncakes on social media, attracting many customers outside Jinhua. Among them is an overseas Chinese in the United States, who are eager to share mooncakes with US friends.
Despite their small size, the mooncakes take nearly two months of preparation, from manuscripts and digital refinements to dough texture tests and flavor balancing.
Wang emphasized that these mooncakes carry both time-honored craftsmanship and stories of reunion, hoping they would introduce Jinhua's culture to more people.
