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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Yes, it’s today, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon of the Chinese calendar. Tonight the children in the neighborhood will walk around with lighted lanterns (hence its other name, Lantern Festival) while their elders sit around a table and eat mooncakes (hence it’s also called Mooncake Festival) while admiring the full moon above.

I have treasured childhood memories of playing lanterns with my neighborhood friends on this moonlit night every year when I was growing up. My grandmother used to prepare a small feast to celebrate the Mid-Autumn although technically it’s always summer here.

We’ve kept up the tradition of celebrating on a small scale since my kids are too old for lanterns and we’re not big fans of mooncakes. Nothing special for dinner tonight except for this yeem kok kai, or salted herbal chicken which a friend brought us from Ipoh as a gift.

It looks like ordinary pak cham kai, or steamed chicken but this had been marinated in salt and steamed in aluminium foil with dong gui and some other Chinese herbs. It smelt really good when I opened up the package. The chicken itself is salty with a strong herbal flavor. Yumm.