The Chinese Moon Festival

This festival is steeped in tradition and celebrated around the world. What is the festival all about and how should we participate?

The Chinese Moon Festival, or Zhongqiu Jie, which translates literally to Mid-Autumn Festival, is an annual event steeped in Chinese culture and traditions. The festival is also known in other cultures as the Lantern Festival or Moon Cake Festival but it is one of the most important traditional events for Chinese people after the Chinese New Year. The Chinese Moon Festival occurs on the 15^th day of the 8^th lunar month in the Chinese calendar. For western folks using the Georgian calendar, the festival occurs in mid or late September, with the festival in 2009 falling on October 3^rd. The date is parallel to the autumn and spring Equinoxes when the moon is at its fullest and roundest.

The Chinese Moon Festival is full of stories of legend that tell the tale of Chang E, who flew to the moon and has remained there since, changing lives. It is said you can see her dancing on the moon during the time of the festival. The legends date back over 3,000 years to when moon worship was common during the Shang Dynasty. In other cultures, there are references and legends about the man on the moon and the Moon Festival is an equivalent to such legends except the moon’s resident is a woman. Throughout history, there have been many legends, variations, and adaptations of the holiday to the point of confusion. However, most consider Chang E to be a mythical Moon Goddess of Immortality. Another aspect of the tradition involves a Jade Rabbit that pounds herbal medicine with Chang E for the gods. Some believe the Jade Rabbit is a shape that Chang E transforms herself into and when one looks at the dark areas at the top of the moon it resembles the shape of the rabbit, with ears that point to the upper right and two circular areas that make up the head and the body.

How People Celebrate

The festival is a holiday in China and several other countries. Farmers traditionally use the holiday as a celebration of the end of the summer harvesting season. Chinese families will use the occasion to organize family reunions. When the full moon has risen the family members will gather to watch the moon, recite moon poems, and eat moon cakes. The festival is especially perfect should the night be quiet, the sky clear, and a light breeze blowing.

Many in love view the Chinese Moon Festival as an especially romantic evening and will spend it casually watching the moon. Even couples who cannot be together in the same physical place consider it to be a wonderful experience, knowing that both parts of the couple are gazing at the same moon at the same time. Due to its romantic notions, the Chinese Moon Festival has inspired many poems and Chinese people believe that the festival will bring much happiness to couples and families.

Other celebratory customs include carrying brightly lit lanterns, bringing incense to pay respect to deities including Chang E, planting trees, collecting and distributing dandelion leaves, and performing Fire Dragon dances. Eating red foods during the Mid-Autumn festival is said to bring good luck. Salmon, lobsters, apples, pomegranates, cooked soy beans and roasted peanuts are just some of the foods typically enjoyed during the festival.

About Moon Cakes

Legends around the Moon and Moon Festival abound. One that I like tells of the origin of Moon Cakes.  During the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (1280 to 1368 AD), the Mongolians conquered the majority Han Chinese and ruled China. A rebel Han leader called Liu Fu Tong wanted to overthrow the Mongolians and return China to Chinese rule.  He gave gifts to honour the Mongolian emperor.  The gifts, you guessed it, were round moon cakes.  Inside Liu’s moon cakes were secret messages with the details of the planned rebellion to take place at mid-Autumn.  The rebellion was successful, of course, and the Ming Dynasty overthrew the Yuan. The tradition continues today, minus the secret messages.

There are many types of moon cakes but the most traditional are made with lotus seed paste. Other moon cakes can be made with traditional ingredients such as red bean paste or black bean paste but today you can find moon cakes with nuts, fruits, icecream, Chinese sausage and ham and even ingredients for western cakes. For Cantonese style moon cakes, the inner part of a moon cake is very salty and considered to be an acquired taste. The yolk is present to represent the moon. Other versions of the moon cake may contain four egg yolks which represent the four phases of the moon.  They are typically about the size of the palm of your hand and can be very filling and are very high in calories. They are cut in quarter sections diagonally and are meant to be shared with family. In the past, it may have taken up to four weeks to make a moon cake but today, many prefer to buy them instead.

Gift Traditions

Before the Moon Festival, it is customary to give gifts to relatives, including at least one box of moon cakes per family. The moon cakes with the most yolks are considered to be the better, more expensive, and most presentable gifts in the south east, Cantonese-speaking areas. For other parts of China there are hundreds of varieties with prices ranging from a few yuan to a few thousand yuan per box with other delicacies like wine, wine glasses and watches thrown in. Other gifts include food items such as meat and seasonal fruit. It is also acceptable to give elder relatives money if you are particularly close to them. Children typically receive paper moon lanterns. Greeting cards are also popular things to purchase for family members and friends.

The Festival Traditions

In the days leading up to the Moon Festival, there are specific traditions followed by celebrants.

·         On the 14^th day of lunar August (the day before the Moon Festival), the moon has almost reached it fullest shape and people will begin to walk about the streets carrying lanterns. This evening is also referred to as the Moon Welcoming.

·         On the 15^th of the lunar August (the day of the festival), families gather for dinner. People typically either stay at home to watch the moon or continue to walk in the streets with a lantern.

·         On the 16^th of the lunar August (the day after the festival), people will return to the street to admire the moon once again. The tradition is referred to as “moon chasing”.

Moon Festival in Australia

There are many countries that celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival around the world. Australia is one that embraces the tradition and every year over 600,000 Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese descendants celebrate the day. Moon cakes are sold at prominent places as well as Asian grocery stores. In Chinatowns, there are many celebrations in the weekends leading up to the Festival that include fireworks, dragon and lion dancing, and traditional drumming. Local businesses often work with Asian populated areas to sponsor celebrations that feature street markets, craft tables, and stages for traditional entertainment. In addition to the plentiful public celebrations, people also celebrate at home with smaller groups of family and friends where lanterns accompany tables and chairs in backyards and moon cakes and fruits are served under the light of the moon. Children can often be seen carrying and running with paper lanterns. Those businesses that have associates in China will often send a traditional Moon Festival gift to honour the traditions.

Australian Firms Starting to Win in China – What are the Key Factors?

The squeaky wheel always gets the most oil – and business disasters in China inevitably get all the press. Since the well publicized failures in the late 1990s by big names like Fosters, there has been a stubborn suspicion that Australian companies ultimately find the China market just too difficult to break into. Tales of success seem harder to come by; there seem to be a lot more stories about business failure in China. But a recent analysis of how 25 Australian firms operate in China should help restore the balance and some optimism. Notwithstanding the very real challenges and problems of doing business in China, the report finds that Australian firms are starting to get it right in China. And what’s more important, these firms reveal some of the factors central to their success (or the occasional lack of it). 

Titled “Engaging China – The realities for Australian business”, the report was prepared by the Australian Business Foundation. Based on case studies and interviews with 25 firms working in the China market, the report emphasizes there is no single model (or factor) for business success in China. At first glance the report lists concepts that will be familiar to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of China; the importance of relationships (guanxi) and having the right business partner being two. The evidence in the report affirms these concepts are meaningful, and not just worn out clichés from the innumerable range of “how to” books about doing business in China. By using case studies and interviews the report presents practical and often fresh perspectives on doing business in China. The 25 firms surveyed comes from a good cross section of business, ranging from financial operations such as the ANZ Banking Group, to mainly SMEs involved in engineering, electronics and software, education, food and professional services. It may not be an exhaustive canvassing of Australian business in China but its findings and especially interviews and case studies make interesting and worthwhile reading.

Some Key Factors

Culture and Relationships – It’s Essential to Get Them Right in China

The report finds culture (in particular relationships, or guanxi), “saturates all aspects of business engagement” in China. The report argues relationships are so critical to business success that they deserve to be considered on the boardroom table, rather than shunted down to lower levels of the operation. The Australian companies interviewed generally say that effective relationships are a precursor - if not a prerequisite - to deals in China. Getting – and keeping these relationships - requires effort, time and commitment. Yet because the concepts of culture or guanxi are inherently intangible and hard to quantify in standard business language, many firms are unwilling to allocate the investment in time, money and effort they require. The ABF report concludes “at the heart of Chinese culture is the importance of relationships.” What this means in practice varies enormously. One manager talks about travelling around China by train so that he could visit his key contacts in person and work on those relationships face to face. Even when this idea is understood, not everyone is prepared to invest the time and effort needed for this. Unsurprisingly the report reveals that senior executives in Australia often struggle to allocate the time and resources required.

Talent and Skills – The Challenge of Getting and Keeping the Right People

If getting the culture “right” is vital, then it logically follows that having people with the skills and experience to work in the Chinese cultural context is also vital. Managers interviewed for the ABF report confirm that employing good Chinese national staff is essential. The report concludes recruiting skilled local managers is “indispensable”. One of the larger Australian firms candidly admitted they made the initial mistake of taking high level Australian staff, dropping them into China and expecting them to operate well, despite having little or no country experience or language skills. The one common complaint from Australian firms profiled in the report is how hard it can be to find, recruit and retain good quality Chinese managers – because of the intense competition for their services.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

The ABF report pulls no punches and confirms you can expect piracy and blatant copying of your product in China. One firm reveals in the report that rip off copies of its products were being marketed back in Australia within months of them being first sold in China The experience of Australian firms (especially smaller ones) is that patents, lawyers and expensive lawsuits usually won’t help. Instead several firms argue that the most effective response is to stay continually ahead of the market and relentlessly innovate and change. Other firms worked on built in design or operational features that would at least slow down the counterfeiters.

Having the Right Local Partner

There was a time that foreign firms could not operate in China without a joint venture or other local partnership. Some of these shotgun marriages worked out – but many did not. Since China’s accession to the WTO and opening of its economy, the compulsory need for a local partner is much less. In many sectors Australian firms can operate on their own as Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprises. And the report talks to at least one experienced China consultant who endorses this as the best way to operate. Yet many of the case studies reveal that having a reliable and effective partner remains a critical part of successful business strategy. But how do you recognize the right partner? Like everything else there is no easy formula, but the case studies reveal interesting insights into the benefits as well as pitfalls of the selection process.

Other Important Factors

The ABF report finds that government remains a ubiquitous element of the business landscape in China – central, provincial and local. China has changed in many ways – but government remains a central part of doing business (for better and for worse). Manufacturers in the report noted that quality can be a stumbling block, as many Chinese partners or suppliers are traditionally focused more on volume and cost. Shortcuts in quality are seen as acceptable if they achieve cost reductions. Insights into managing this dilemma are just one aspect of the useful case studies included in the report.

Communication raises its head again as a significant issue impacting performance in China –getting the language right, but also the language of nuance – being tuned in to that indirect style of communication is not easy and requires expert assistance in the form of interpreting and translation and reading between the lines.

Focus, find a niche, and continually adapt are mission critical factors

All too often newcomers to the China market will see it as one vast, undifferentiated market of 1.3 potential customers. But it is vital to understand the enormous diversity and complexity of China’s regions, government levels, and the different stages of economic development across the country. This is especially important for small and medium sized companies who don’t have the resources to tackle a market the size of China. The message in the ABF reports is to focus. Identifying and working on a targeted segment or niche, is essential. It might be a single city, or a specific customer group or a larger geographic region – but develop a business focus. Andrew McGregor, the former CEO of ANZ China notes it would be a mistake to develop a business plan for one city – say Beijing – then apply it to Shanghai, Chongqing or Guangzhou and expect it to be successful

It is also essential to accept and deal with a constantly changing and dynamic market place, one that often does not follow the same rules as mature, industrialized economies. The ABF report concludes that the most successful firms in China display qualities of flexibility, agility, adaptability and an “exceptional ability to learn” in the China market. The pace of change can be staggering – take banking: “China’s banking system has gone from where Australia was in the 1960s to where it is today in just a very short time – about 3-5 years.” Jock McGregor (Former CEO ANZ China)

China is changing so fast and so quickly opportunities can simply be missed or just not even seen. Long time China watchers will remember predictions during the late 1980s that western style fast food would never appeal to Chinese families, and later that Chinese consumers would never embrace large scale supermarket shopping. The proliferation of giant international supermarket chains like Wal-Mart and Carrefour, and every known brand of western fast food across China have made such predictions look very foolish in hindsight.

In a report on the China market, the Boston Consulting Group warned that this explosive and often unpredictable rate of change in local tastes and preferences can rapidly change the marketplace; “Armed with superior insight into consumer behaviour, a relatively small player could leap frog the competition and usurp a market leader’s position with remarkable speed.”

The explosion in consumer wealth (at least along the eastern seaboard of China) has made Chinese consumer tastes look very much like anywhere else in the world – home furnishings, mobile phones and electronic accessories, international travel, cars, branded luxury goods, and so on. The appearance of uniformity can be deceptive. There are major income gaps between city and country – even within the same city. Even very large inland cities can have much lower income levels and very different demands and requirements than their coastal cousins. In the ABF report BigWorld, an Australian computer gaming software firm with an international reputation, discovered its gaming product was too sophisticated for the computer platforms available in lower tier cities in China – and it had to work with its partner to modify the product accordingly.

Successful players also recognize the need to adapt and refine products and services to local tastes and preferences. Although the western fast food outlets are easily recognizable as those you would find in Australia or the USA, they have subtle adaptations to local preferences, including different packaging and food products.

The case studies in the ABF report include numerous examples of how traditional and cultural preferences can influence the business process. One telling example is the Australian exporter of premium priced live lobsters to China, who found his customers started complaining when the live lobsters delivered were not the deep red colour they preferred. The firm quickly realized that the colour red (an auspicious colour) was preferred in every step of the business process in China – from packaging to the lobsters themselves.

References

Engaging China-The Realities for Australian Business  

Australian Business Foundation August 2009 www.abfoundation.com.au

Winning the Hearts and Minds of China’s Consumers   

The Boston Consulting Group 2007