Why are piggy biscuits back in style this Mid-Autumn Festival?
The snack – a big favourite among Hong Kong children in 1960s – was sold in tiny ‘pig cages’ based on those used to drown adulterers during Qing dynasty
Anyone who saw the 2010 Hong Kong period drama, Echoes of the Rainbow – about a working-class Hong Kong family whose eldest son falls ill with leukaemia – will understand that mooncakes were a big deal around the 1960s.
In the film, eight year old Law Chun-yi sells counterfeit, autographed photographs of film stars to pay off instalments for much-prized, four-yolk mooncakes at the local bakery.
When his scam is discovered by his mother, the young child starts screaming in the street that all he wants to do is to eat a whole box of four-yolk mooncakes by himself.
It is a powerful, gut-wrenching scene, which highlights just how far Hong Kong’s economy has come in the 50 years since then.
The average clerk in Hong Kong in the 1960s earned HK$240 (about US$30) per month, so the cost of buying mooncakes for everyone – including the elderly members of the family and company bosses – which then cost HK$8.50 a box could mean a person spending a significant part of their monthly salary.
That is why, in the past, it was common for Hongkongers to pay money in monthly instalments into a plan called a “mooncake club” (月餅會) to ease the burden during the festive season.
According to Chinese custom, it is also considered unlucky to give a single gift.
Yet in those days, to have given two boxes of mooncakes would have been a huge financial undertaking, so, piggy biscuits became a popular accompanying gift.