One Moon, One World: global museums and their mooncake innovation (4)

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Van Gogh Museum

Symbol of the Moon: Sunflowers

It may sound odd at first that sunflowers are taken as the symbol of the Mooncake Festival, but the Van Gogh Museum has its own concerns. Traditionally, the Mooncake Festival is celebrated for its autumn harvest, thus full moon in Chinese culture also represents harvest and prosperity. Sunflowers, which are a symbol of autumn harvest, with its seeds being a favorite snack for Chinese people, is no doubt a great representation of the Mooncake Festival spirit.

Van Gogh’s series of sunflower paintings might be his most renowned artwork. The flowers glow in richness the more observers look at it. Van Gogh painted a total of five large canvases with sunflowers in a vase, with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else.’ In this way, he demonstrated that it is possible to create an image with numerous variations of a single colour, without any loss of eloquence.

Innovative mooncake flavor:

Van Gogh Museum’s mooncake flavor is quite traditional: milk and yolk flavor, which is the favorite for people in China’s Cantonese-speaking regions such as Guangdong and Hong Kong. But the museum has taken the initiative to combine the mooncake with flower tea, which adds refreshing feeling to the festival feast.