The Mid-Autumn Festival is still months away, but mooncakes from Houjie, Dongguan, have already begun their journey across the ocean. In recent days, Dongguan Xinyuan Food Co., Ltd., based in Xiabian Community, Houjie, has been busy packing and shipping batches of mooncakes to overseas markets. The products are being loaded into containers and transported through temperature-controlled cold-chain logistics to countries including Canada and Australia.

One recent shipment is bound for Sydney, Australia. According to Wang Leqiang, deputy general manager of sales at Xinyuan Food, the batch includes 9,288 boxes of lava custard mooncakes and is expected to arrive at Costco stores in Sydney in about half a month.

"This is the second year our mooncakes have been sold at Costco in Australia," Wang said. "Last year's sales were encouraging, so this year the client added one more container to the order."

Australia is not the only destination. The company has already exported 12 containers of mooncakes to Canada, including lava custard mooncakes and double-yolk white lotus seed paste mooncakes. This year, a total of 16 containers of mooncakes will be shipped overseas, with export orders up 1.5 times compared with the same period in previous years.

Xinyuan Food has been exploring overseas markets for more than a decade. The company has taken part in trade exhibitions in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, while adjusting recipes and flavors to meet the preferences and requirements of different markets. Since last year, several of its products, including mooncakes, have been exported to Malaysia, the United States, Australia and Canada.

As more food companies in Dongguan accelerate their global expansion, traditional delicacies such as mooncakes are gaining wider recognition abroad. More than a festive treat, they have become a taste of home for overseas Chinese communities, carrying the warmth of reunion and the flavor of Dongguan across thousands of miles.