Pakistani student savors China's Mid-Autumn Festival culture

NANCHANG, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Fahad Kabeer flattened a dough portion akin to a ping-pong ball into a wooden mold, and gently tapped the mold up and down on the worktop, effortlessly shaping the dough into a mooncake. The mold artfully imprinted the Chinese character "Fu" onto the mooncake.

"A Fu! In Chinese, it means happiness, good luck and good wishes," he exclaimed as he picked up the mooncake.

This is the first time for Fahad Kabeer, a Pakistani student in east China's Jiangxi Province, to take part in such a cultural experience. What made it even more special was that he imprinted the handwriting of a renowned Chinese painter onto a mooncake, a traditional pastry for the Mid-Autumn Festival which will be celebrated on Friday this year.

The Fu was selected from a piece of calligraphy by Zhu Da, also known as Bada Shanren, a Chinese ink wash painter born in the 1620s in the provincial capital Nanchang.

Besides the character, Fahad Kabeer also crafted mooncakes with the motifs of a distinctive angular rabbit, a deer and a sleeping cat, all works of Bada Shanren. The bakery class was organized as part of a Mid-Autumn culture experience trip.

These mooncakes, featuring Chinese calligraphy and paintings, are the result of a collaborative effort between the Bada Shanren Memorial Hall and a local bakery enterprise in celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The unique initiative comes amid the growing popularity of creative cultural products in the country, particularly among young people.

Every Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese families get together to enjoy the full moon and eat mooncakes. "In my country Pakistan, we don't have the Mid-Autumn Festival, but we have festivals like the Eid al-Fitr, also a family reunion festival," said Fahad Kabeer, who has been studying at the Jiangxi University of Chinese Medicine for the last seven years.

Following his mooncake-making workshop and a visit to view a collection of antique wooden cake molds, Fahad Kabeer concluded his trip with a visit to the Bada Shanren Memorial Hall. His curiosity led him to examine how closely the motifs on the mooncakes resembled the paintings.

"Exactly the same. Even the whiskers are exactly the same," he said while scanning the exhibition room, his gaze alternating between the rabbit depicted in a painting by Bada Shanren on the wall and the green and pink mooncakes held in his hand. The rabbit, a symbol of longevity, peace and prosperity in Chinese culture, often finds a place in the artworks of many artists.

The series of mooncakes featuring the works of Bada Shanren has been well received since its launch and nearly 2,000 boxes have been sold.

"In terms of the color of the motifs on the mooncakes, we chose the macaron colors favored by the young instead of black, white and gray used in Chinese ink wash paintings, in the hope that more young people will learn about Bada Shanren's art," said Zhou Xiaojian, curator of the memorial hall.

In recent years, many creative cultural products infused with traditional Chinese culture have gained rapid popularity, reflecting the growing trend of spiritual and cultural consumption among the Chinese people. "The mooncakes help bring traditional culture to thousands of families with Mid-Autumn Festival blessings," Zhou said.