Traditional Mooncake Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Because Guangdong opened to the outside world relatively early in the modern era, Cantonese-style mooncakes were the first to go abroad, sold far to the overseas Chinese communities of Southeast Asia and Europe and America, and had already gained renown at home and abroad by the late Qing and early Republican period. The Anqi Cantonese-style mooncake is an important branch of the Cantonese style; it originated from the Liang family's "Yongji Bakery" in Xinhui during the Qing dynasty.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Also called "Guangdong mooncake," the Cantonese style is an important type of Chinese mooncake, named for its Guangdong origin, and mainly sold in Guangdong, Hainan, and Guangxi. Through generations of transmission and development, its processes—wrapper-making, filling-cooking, filling-wrapping, and baking—each have a character of their own. Anqi Cantonese mooncakes use lotus paste, bean paste, and salted egg yolk as their main fillings; the finished mooncakes have thin wrappers and rich fillings, are moist and soft, with delicate raised patterns on the surface, oily and lustrous, golden in color, and come in both salty and sweet flavors that are delicious and mellow. By wrapper type, Cantonese mooncakes fall into three main categories—syrup-skin, crisp-skin, and snow-skin—with syrup-skin being the most common. This wrapper is soft and moist, golden-red in color. Sweet cakes with bean paste, savory cakes with seafood, and nut-and-kernel cakes that are both sweet and salty are all syrup-skin mooncakes.
Archived Records of Process Steps
Through generations of transmission and development, its processes—wrapper-making, filling-cooking, filling-wrapping, and baking—each have a character of their own.
Syrup-skin pastry
Of the three skin types the syrup skin dominates, giving a soft, glossy, golden crust with raised moulded patterns.
Lotus, bean paste and salted egg yolk
Lotus seed paste, bean paste and salted egg yolk are the principal fillings, giving a thin skin with a rich sweet and savoury balance.
Cooking the fillings
The pastes are cooked before assembly until they are oily and set, each filling following its own heat.
Wrapping and baking
Skin making, filling, wrapping and baking each have their own character after several generations of development.
Low-sugar and low-fat variants
Inheritor Liang Qiusheng pioneered low-sugar, low-fat, fruit and seafood varieties and holds a patent for sugar-free high-fibre low-energy mooncakes.
The Yongji cake shop of Xinhui
The craft traces back to the Yongji cake shop of the Liang family in Xinhui during the Qing and passed through several generations.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Beyond Guangdong, Hainan, and Guangxi, where Cantonese mooncakes are sold, Guangdong's early opening in the modern era also carried them to overseas Chinese enclaves in Southeast Asia and Europe and America. In the late Qing and early Republican period, Cantonese bakeries took root in the emigrant hometowns; once the festival arrived, every family bought and gave mooncakes, and so the craft spread along with remittance letters and steamships. The Anqi Cantonese mooncake began at the Liang family's Yongji Bakery in Xinhui, a branch within the Cantonese system, and later moved to Shenzhen; this move also brought the Xinhui lineage of the craft into the industrial landscape of the Pearl River Delta. In terms of method, the three wrapper types—syrup-skin, crisp-skin, and snow-skin—coexist; among them, sweet bean-paste cakes, savory seafood cakes, and nut-and-kernel cakes that are both sweet and salty mostly belong to the syrup-skin line, thus dividing salty from sweet. The Anqi line uses lotus paste, bean paste, and salted egg yolk as its main fillings, ranking among the richest-flavored of Cantonese mooncakes.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Traditional Mooncake Making Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Liang Qiusheng (per the official archives of the related inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born April 1965, a native of Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province. Representative inheritor of the fourth batch of the national-level intangible cultural heritage project, the traditional mooncake-making craft (Anqi Cantonese-style mooncake craft). A technician of Anqi Cantonese-style mooncake making. He learned mooncake-making from his father in childhood, and in 1994 became the apprentice of Luo Baojian, systematically studying mooncake craft and mastering the Cantonese mooncake's material selection, specifications, variety requirements, production standards, and process flow. Building on the traditional mooncake craft's fine materials, authentic flavor, clever technique, deep custom, and long transmission, he pioneered new processes for low-sugar, low-fat, fruit, and seafood mooncakes, and obtained a patent certificate for "sugar-free high-fiber low-energy mooncake and its production method." Since 1997 he has taken on apprentices and taught the craft, training a large number of mooncake makers and ensuring the transmission of the Cantonese-style mooncake craft.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhao Guangjin 04-1908
- Liang Qiusheng 04-1909
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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