Gorgeous mooncake boxes  

More than a week has passed since this year's Mid-Autumn Festival but I am still enjoying the exquisite flavour of mooncakes. It is not that I received too many gift boxes of the sweet, oily food. I bought the cakes I have loved to devour since my childhood - but at discount prices.

Every year before the festival I receive a few boxes of mooncakes as presents from friends and relatives, but seldom eat them. I give them to other friends and relatives. To treat myself and my children, I buy non-packaged cakes, which are much cheaper than their equivalents ensconced in those fanciful receptacles. I often buy them after the festival because they become at least 50 per cent cheaper the very moment the full moon begins to wane on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.

The mooncakes I bought before the festival, which fell on September 18, cost 9 yuan (US$1.12) each.