When he opened up shop in Hanoi's Old Quarter, customers lined the street to buy Ong Co's hockey-puck-sized cakes, a chewy pastry heralding the arrival of the autumn harvest.
Decades later, when Vietnam was torn in half, Ong Co headed to the democratic south and reopened his store in Saigon, later passing the business along to his son.
Now his grandchildren carry on, selling mooncakes and fragrant pastries from a bakery in Little Saigon, the flagship in a century-old family business that stretches from Vietnam to Orange County.
And in the final days of September, with the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, the bakery was in full swing as people drove from all over Southern California to Dong Hung Vien to fill colorful boxes with the confection. They give the packaged tins as gifts or carefully unpack them, setting the mooncakes on altars to pay tribute to ancestors.
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