Mooncake Tradition Question

[Cher]

Hello!

Is it OK to give Mooncakes as a business gift year round or only in the Fall season? I would like to learn more about this tradition.

thanks!

[jbradfor]

I've only heard of giving mooncakes around mid-autumn festival. Are they even available other times of the year? At least easily?

[roddy]

Anything other than one week either side of Mid-autumn Festival would be odd, I think. At any other time mooncakes should be kept in a cupboard waiting for regifting.

[skylee]

I think there are different kinds of mooncakes. There are those that we eat around mid-autumn festival, and there are those which look just like fried dumplings/pan cakes and are available all year round as everyday snacks. I think I saw them sold on the streets in Shanghai and Pingyao. Am I right?

[gabriellim]

Mooncakes during the specific festive period would be fine.

Hampers might be a better option for general business gifts.

[will-w]

the supermarket will start to sell mooncakes maybe one month before the festival,if you wanna give mookcakes as gift you'd better do that within one week before the festival.It is a tradition that all the family numbers share mooncakes,fruits or other foods together and enjoy the beautiful moon on Aug,15.After the festival,the mooncakes will be much cheaper and it is wierd giving or receiving mooncakes because they are left.

[Cher]

thanks to everyone for the great information! It is appreciated. Would something like a basket with fine teas and pineapple paste cakes (like these ones http://keewah.us/pineapplepastecakes.aspx) be appropriate for a business gift? I have an excellent coupon for this company and would like to use it if I can....their baked goods look wonderful.

[skylee]

It depends on the sort of business you are in. I think fine teas (very fine teas) are ok. Pineapple paste cakes don't make very good gifts IMHO (I hate them). Alcohol or something with your company logo might be better.

This is a bit off-the-topic. A friend of mine deals with artists from overseas. She said that a Korean pop group has given her a clock as a gift (with signatures of the cute girls in the group) and nobody in the office knew how to deal with it (they could not return it or throw it away as it was a gift, but they did not want a gift clock). So they put it in the conference room. And when the boss discovered the "gift clock" when he chaired a meeting in that conference room, he was very displeased.

[David Wong]

What's your budget? Gifts that are generally appreciated by the Chinese are not necessarily obvious choices from a Western perspective. You might consider alcohol, but limit your choices to Cognacs and maybe Chinese rice wine (maotai, not the cooking kind).

Aside from that, if you're thinking of giving food, you could consider ginseng, bird's nest, dried abalone, sea cucumber, in gift packaging.

Not sure about fine teas unless you're a connoisseur and can identify the really good stuff - it would be a faux pas to give the everyday stuff.

[Cher]

really useful info everyone...thanks again. Loved the clock story ...must have been pretty tacky!

[jbradfor]

The clock is more of a cultural thing. In Cantonese, the word "to give a clock" (送鐘) sounds a lot like the word "to go to a funeral" (skylee, what are the characters?).

[EDIT: it's 送終. I can use google! And note that they sound the same in Mandarin as well.]

[imron]

It's not just go to a funeral, but also to accompany/attend to a parent/loved one on their deathbed.

[skylee]

Re the clock story. My friend and I were puzzled by the choice of gift because we thought such entertainers should have agents/ managers to take care of such things for them and it is the latters' job to ensure that their overseas hosts are not offended. Perhaps that particular group just didn't care, or perhaps their manager had not done his/her work properly. But of course my friend's office wrote off the incident as 不知者不罪 because they were foreigners (but we did wonder if in general Koreans know about that taboo).

So the lesson is it is good to check/research about local custom/taboos beforehand. End of off-topic story.