内容正文:
英语 必修·第二册 作业与测评
Period 4 Developing ideas
课时作业(四)
Ⅰ 阅读
Chinese mooncake is the representative food of the MidAutumn Festival. It is a kind of round cookie with various fillings and different artistic patterns on the surface.
In Chinese culture, roundness symbolizes completeness and togetherness. The mooncake is not just a food. It's a profound cultural tradition deep in Chinese people's hearts, symbolizing a spiritual feeling. At MidAutumn Festival, people eat mooncakes together with family, and present mooncakes to relatives or friends to express love and best wishes.
As early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in what today are Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces in east China, there was a kind of “Taishi cake” thick at the center and thin at the edge, which was the origin of the mooncake. In the Han Dynasty, sesame (芝麻) and walnuts were introduced into China, and round cookies filled with these foods appeared. In the Tang Dynasty, the name “mooncake” was used for the first time. In the Northern Song Dynasty, mooncakes got popular in the royal palace. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that the custom of eating these cookies during the MidAutumn Festival became popular.
Mooncakes vary according to different regional styles and tastes. Cantonesestyle mooncakes are known for their sweetness. Suzhoustyle mooncakes have existed for more than a thousand years. They have soft layers of dough (面团) and lots of sugar and lard, making them available in sweet or salty tastes. Beijingstyle mooncakes feature the delicate use of sweetness and fine decoration. Chaoshanstyle mooncakes are usually larger than other mooncakes with common fillings of red bean paste and potato paste.
Most mooncakes contain high amounts of sugar and oil, which are not healthy. To decrease the harmfulness that high fat and calories bring to our body, some foods are recommended to eat together with mooncakes, including tea, sour fruit like grapes, and wine. They help digest, and take away fat in our b