Shanghai Street View: Musty Mooncakes
Gross! That was my first reaction on reading about the latest food safety scandal in Shanghai, which involved the recycling of paste used to fill the famous mooncakes given out give out en masse each year during the Mid Autumn Festival. I’m not a big fan of mooncakes anyhow, but this latest revelation in the never-ending series of food scandals across China certainly won’t make me any more likely to eat these unavoidable treats that suddenly appear in stores every September or October.
Each food safety scandal is different in its own way, even though all have the common theme of putting public health at risk and most involve greed. Some scandals are the result of people trying to get a bit more money for their products, which was what happened when farmers watered down their milk and then spiked it with the industrial chemical melamine to mask the lower protein content. Other times are the result of laziness or stinginess or both, which was the case earlier this year when farmers near Shanghai dumped thousands of diseased dead pigs into the Huangpu River because they didn’t want to pay money to dispose of them properly.
This latest scandal stems from another Chinese phenomenon whereby no one can ever bear to waste anything edible, even if it’s food that has potentially spoiled. This mentality probably has its origins in leaner times when just getting enough to eat was a challenge for many people, and the thought of throwing away anything that was potentially eatable would have been unthinkable.
City officials disclosed the new mooncake scandal at a recent press conference, where they reported breaking 598 criminal cases of people harming public safety in the first half of the year. The case of the recycled mooncake filling was one of 12 involving food safety, and was a favorite among local media due to its colorful and somewhat gross nature.
According to the reports, a gang of 6 people took unsold mooncakes from 2012 and sliced them open to dig out their various fillings, which included almond, lotus paste and a few other varieties. They then inserted the paste into new shells and baked them again to produce “fresh” mooncakes to be sold in grocery stores and wholesale markets. Altogether they earned 99,000 yuan from their effort.
The reports don’t say if anyone actually got sick from eating the recycled mooncakes, and I suspect that no one was seriously injured. Both my Chinese and foreign friends often joke that many mooncakes that are given as gifts each year may actually already be 1 or 2 years old or even older, a result of the phenomenon known as “re-gifting”, as people often receive far more of these cakes each year than they can actually eat.
The situation is somewhat similar to fruit cakes in the West, which are usually given out as presents around Christmas. Like the mooncakes, fruit cakes are also quite hard and indestructible, and many people find them unappetizing because they’re so heavy. But their durability makes them easy to stow in the freezer for a year or two, and then bring out for a quick defrosting to give as gifts during future Christmases.
Mooncakes are already the source of numerous colorful scandals, as a black market usually springs up for vouchers for free boxes that are given out each year as gifts before the Mid Autumn Festival. I suspect that perhaps a third or more of all mooncakes given out each year probably never get eaten, which is why there’s so much leftover filling for unscrupulous people like the ones in this latest scandal.
More broadly speaking, I do think this particular scandal stems from the sometimes annoying habit among many Chinese of not wanting to throw away anything that might be potentially edible. I sometimes encounter this phenomenon in another form at restaurants, when a waiter will accidentally bring me a dish I didn’t order. Rather than taking back the dish and replacing it with the correct one, however, the waiter will usually plead with me to accept the incorrect dish and also to pay for it.
The mentality seems to be: We made the dish with real food, so it would be wasteful to throw it away and you should pay for our mistake. I can sympathize a little with these waiters, as I suspect that some of the cost of the food may be deducted from their paychecks. They also probably get yelled at by their bosses when they make the wrong dish.
I can also understand the broader mentality of not wanting to waste food that is still eatable, especially when there are people who can’t get enough to eat in other parts of the world. But it’s also time for some of these less scrupulous Chinese to realize that we’re living in more prosperous times, and also that actions like the case of the recycled mooncake filling can pose a real risk to public health.
