Why the Newspaper Business is Like Mooncakes

I would be really sad if the direst predictions about the news business, in particular the newspaper business, were to come true. I love reading the morning paper with my cup of coffee, and particularly on Sundays—especially when the New York Times was much bigger than it is today.

So when I saw the bustle of delivery vans stacked full of morning papers, vendors offloading them onto pallets, men on bicycles stacking them up behind them, and middle-aged ladies selling a range of local and international ones on the platform outside the Star Ferry, I was encouraged about the health of the newspaper industry in Hong Kong. 

Every day on the way home from my walk, I buy the South China Morning Post, more commonly referred to as the SCMP, the most influential and most trusted daily in the territory—including  Chinese-language newspapers.  I like the writing style of the paper and the way it takes on local social issues—like the rising youth drug problems and the incompetence in area hospitals or government corruption. But SCMP is far from being the largest circulating paper. That honor goes to the combined market for the four free newspapers (three in Chinese and one in English) given out at train stations and other public transportation centers.

The press here isn’t as healthy as it appears, however. The industry has the same problems as it does in the West—declining advertising revenues (SCMP lost about $7.5 million in the first six months of this year alone) and failure to attract young readers. I have noted that the SCMP sells a special edition that includes only classified ads—for about half the price of the newspaper. I found that really interesting as in the U.S., newspapers have just about totally conceded classified advertising to craigslist. I mentioned this to my internet communication class and was told that Hong Kong has no craigslist equivalent—though just across the border in China one exists. After class a young woman came up to my desk and said that she often buys the paper’s classified section, touted to have the best employment ads in Hong Kong, when she is job hunting. She said she was happy to do that as otherwise, she would buy the paper and throw away the news section. She thought that was a waste of money and newsprint—so better to buy the ads without the news! Youth are the same everywhere—more interested in the internet, computer games, and other ways of getting the information they need. Consuming news the traditional way is far down on their list.

So us retired folks are about the only audience left for news it seems. When I travel, I love to read the local newspapers to learn about the culture, the local events, and what issues concern the population. It is also the way I learn how to make a distant location a little more like home. Alongside the SCMP, I also read the edgy Hong Kong Magazine—written primarily for expats—that can be found on Fridays at no cost in the neighborhood Starbucks. It is one of several Asia City Media Group publications that appear in several regional cities. 

Mooncakes and Moon Festivals

It was through a story about moon cakes that appeared in the magazine that first got me interested in the overpriced dessert that appears in supermarkets, bakeries, convenience stores and even in Haagen Dazs stores (where the special ice cream variety of mooncake is sold).  Later I found a mooncake story in the SCMP and many references to mooncakes on the web. Odd that I had never heard of them before—or of the holiday, the moon festival, itself before coming to Hong Kong. It illustrates how very disconnected from the rest of the world Americans can be. We expect to find our holidays wherever we go but are surprised that other traditions exist and that they are celebrated by more people than ever think about Thanksgiving or Halloween (though I understand there is a following for that holiday here).

The Moon or mid-Autumn festival has some connection to Thanksgiving, however, as it is considered a harvest festival. Now mind you, it is hard to imagine harvest in 95-degree heat in my shorts and t-shirt. But never mind, in some parts of Asia where the holiday is celebrated, actual autumn temperatures do exist. Celebrated on the 15^th day of the 8^th month of the lunar calendar (October 3, this year), it also resembles Thanksgiving in that families reunite and have a special meal together. Falling on a Sunday this year, there is no public holiday. On this day, gifts of food and money are given to relatives to indicate respect and love for them. Prior to the holiday you should at least give one box of moon cakes to your family. From the number of people I have seen on the streets carrying the beautifully wrapped or decorated boxes bearing mooncakes, the tradition seems to be widely upheld.

As students are a major source of information about the culture, I asked them about their fondness for mooncakes. “We don’t like them,” said one. She claimed that because the traditional mooncakes are falling out of favor with young people (much like the news business), bakers have come up with more attractive forms of the sweet in the “snowy” variety or the ice cream versions.

More needs to be said about the several kinds of moon cakes. After reading about them in the HK Magazine, described by Johannes Pong as “cloyingly sweet,” “rich with lard,” and “dense with egg yolk,” I just had to try them. But I thought I had better start out with the adapted and modernized version called the “snowy” moon cake that I found in the freezer section of my supermarket. I chose the little translucent glutinous rice gems that promised blueberry  and  chestnut fillings. Two of them, just 2 inches in diameter, sold for about $4. At home, I cut them up and sampled them with my husband, Pekin. Not bad, we thought. Now on to the real thing.

Given that I wasn’t in the generation of my students who hated the authentic moon cakes, I thought maybe I would like them better than they did. They are called moon cakes because they are round, but also because they contain four salted duck egg yolks that represent the four phases of the moon. Surrounding the egg yolks are a lotus-seed paste (or bean paste), and all around that is the lard-filled pastry. Yum!

With just a few days left before the holiday and fearing the moon cake supply would be exhausted, I purchased a single traditional moon cake in a lovely decorated box (although the clerk assured me that this was the real thing and didn’t I really want to buy a box of four). At home I sliced it up in small pieces as is the custom and served it to Pekin. It was indeed sweet and heavy as described, but the taste wasn’t bad and the saltiness of the egg yolk offset the sweetness of the lotus paste.  I guess I must have consumed more of the egg yolk than did Pekin because my intestines responded unfavorably a few hours later. I wonder if it is a good idea to keep cooked egg yolks—even when surrounded by the other ingredients out on the shelf and unrefrigerated for so long.   Anyway, I don’t think we will finish the rest of the mooncake, despite the price. Reports are (but not listed on the box) that one mooncake contains 800 calories and 400 times the amount of daily cholesterol a person should consume.  Local campaigns have tried to warn people not to eat too many. But despite this, at least one school was giving them out as rewards to students who completed their homework.

News and Mooncakes

At first I thought writing about the news business and mooncakes in the same blog didn’t fit together at all. But the more I write, the more I am convinced they are intimately related. Here’s why.  First off, it seems that locally the state of the economy is measured by the sales of both newspapers and mooncakes.  Maxims, one of the large local bakers of the product, is reported to have ordered 32 million duck eggs for the 2009 season. The owners of the business insist that Hong Kongers will need to have their mooncakes, regardless of the economic downturn—or tsunami, as it is locally called. Early reports of sales showed a bit of a slump in mooncake sales, however. So like the newspaper business, mooncake sales are reflective of the larger economic conditions.

Hong Kong youth view mooncakes, like newspapers, as part of their parents’ and grandparents’ traditions—not their own. And they are not particularly fooled by marketing schemes and changes in ingredients to woo them to buy. Much like free newspapers and online news websites don’t necessarily hook young people into becoming lifelong news consumers. And if all the young people in Hong Kong stop eating mooncakes, one day the lovely decorated boxes will disappear from the store shelves to be replaced by something more tasteful to the next generation. If the same happens to newspapers, there will be no more vans backing up to the Star Ferry station to unload and no more employment for the women who sell the publications. That will be an even sadder day for the residents of Honk Kong and the rest of the world’s population. We will have lost two valued traditions. Let’s hear it for mooncakes. Long live mooncakes. And long live the South China Morning Post.