As the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, mooncakes are turning up all over China, from traditional teashops to Starbucks counters. The holiday is one of China’s four most important festivals, and in the weeks before the date arrives, top hotels get into the spirit with lavish(奢华) treats in lovely packaging. Traditionally, the cookie-sized round pastry(馅饼) has a rich thick filling usually made from red-bean or lotus-seed paste and covered by a thin crust. It may also contain yolks from salted duck eggs, integrating a beautiful savory tinge into the sugary taste. Fillings and crusts have become more diverse over time, especially in the hands of skilled pastry chefs. The mooncakes in Chinese culture represent homesickness, and the top crust of each moon-shaped pastry is generally imprinted with the Chinese characters for longevity or harmony.

This year, the fancy gift boxes that have long driven the mooncake trade are particularly striking and rich with tradition.

For example, the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai, built in 1929 and a magnet for Hollywood celebrities in the 1930s, has prepared a selection of mooncake gift boxes with designs inspired by the beauty and elegance of the hotel’s famous art deco style. The simplest box of four pieces (red-bean paste, creamy custard, plain cheese, green-bean paste) is 198 yuan($29.64), while more lavish selections of five or six pieces, including mooncakes with egg yolk, run up to 338 yuan for a box.

Beijing’s Nuo Hotel, meanwhile, has created Ming Dynasty (1368－1644) inspired mooncake gift packs based on the design of porcelain vases in the hotel lobby, with the essence of landscape painting using Zhang Dai’s poetic passages to show the peaceful harmony of man and nature. The box of six is 158 yuan, and includes mooncakes ranging from cheese mango to charcoal burning fragrant Pu'er tea and white lotus with egg yolk. A box of eight cakes of different flavors is 228 yuan.

Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday. The day after it has been known as Black Friday. 【小题1】and it has been the busiest shopping day of the year in the US since 2005.

 Black Friday is a great time to go shopping. 【小题2】 The biggest one is that there are not enough low-priced items. Each store may only have a few. These items are in great need, so people stand in long lines to get them. They may wait three to four hours before a store opens. They may be hoping to get a low price on a TV or computer, but not everybody can get one. 【小题3】 

【小题4】 It was first used in Philadelphia in the 1950s. The police called this day Black Friday because of the heavy traffic it caused. In the 1960s, stores tried to rename the day “Big Friday”. It did not stick. The name “Black Friday” continued to spread across the country. It seems that it is here to stay.

 Now people all over the country take part in Black Friday events. 【小题5】Stores have held Black Friday events in the UK, Australia, and Brazil since 2012. In Mexico, stores offer a weekend of discounts every year. They call it “El Buen Fin”, which means “the good weekend” in Spanish. I guess people everywhere like to buy things on sale.