A Mid-Autumn gift to gag on

Wuren mooncakes

Mooncakes containing pickles and meat

(Ecns) -- China's Mid-Autumn Day, which falls on Oct. 19 this year, is an occasion when young and old gather and gaze at the brightest full moon of the year. To round off the celebrations, a mouthful of mooncake is also essential.

The palm-size pastry -- made of a thin baked crust cosseting a compact, soft filling -- runs the gamut from plain to fancy, traditional to contemporary. Wuren (five kernel paste), a mixture of nuts and seeds, is one of the traditional fillings.

But wuren filling clearly isn't everyone's favorite, giving rise to a new marketing campaign by a merchant on Taobao, China's biggest online market, that has quickly gone viral.

The wuren mooncakes on offer at the shop "taste bad, or your money back," and should be "given to people you hate." The merchant also advises customers to "take photos when the recipient bites into the disgusting food."

The ad has sparked a firestorm of jokes on Weibo and other popular online forums.

One netizen said he cried when he first bit into a wuren-flavored mooncake. Another netizen said: "I won't maintain a business relationship with people who give me wuren mooncakes as gifts."

Despite a campaign to get wuren out of mooncakes, the filling still has it fans, mostly among seniors. Li Hui, a manager of a mooncake company in Guangzhou, said wuren mooncakes sell well among the elderly in Guangdong.

Experts say the five ingredients -- walnuts, watermelon seeds, peanuts, sesame seeds and almonds -- represent traditional culture, which values "fullness and harmony." Rao Shengyuan, a culture scholar, said he and many local Cantonese like wuren mooncakes and believe they should not be eliminated.

With the debate on wuren still raging, mooncakes containing pickles and meat have further shocked netizens. According to the Shanghai Morning Post, such fillings are on the top of the recommendation list for Shanghai locals, who line up outside Wang Jia Sha, a Shanghai-style restaurant, to get them.

Liu Chongliang, deputy manager of the restaurant, said sales of pickle-and-meat mooncakes have reached 40,000 units a day.

In addition, a photo series of "innovative" fillings has been posted on Sina Weibo. It includes mooncakes containing Chinese chive and fried eggs, pork with salted vegetable, beef, pu-erh tea and chrysanthemum.