A mooncake is a Chinese pastry traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The cakes are typically made round, symbolizing unity or reunion. And while most mooncakes are sweet, a special kind of savory mooncake has recently become all the rage in Shanghai. CGTN's Xu Mengqi has more.

6 am in downtown Shanghai, cars are still rare, but this line of people has already been here for hours.

And it's nothing other than these freshly baked mooncakes that have been keeping them wide awake.

"The sauce just tastes great."

These meat mooncakes are known as the Suzhou style.

ZHU PEIFANG SHANGHAI RESIDENT "The skin is thin, the pork is delicate and fresh. It's just delicious."

ZHANG HAO PASTRY SHOP EMPLOYEE "When we got off work at 8 pm last night, they had already started queuing. We open at 7 am, so it means they had to queue for nearly 12 hours."

XU MENGQI SHANGHAI "The preference for mooncakes' flavors is largely a regional thing. Having come from the southern part of China, I grew up with the knowledge that this is what mooncakes should look like. It's known as the Cantonese style, with sort of a chewy glossy crust and mostly sweet fillings such as lotus seed paste and red bean paste. So it seems odd to me that here in Shanghai people would queue hours for savory mooncakes stuffed with pork."

Hence to better compare the sweet and the savory, I brought in two guests, neither of which was familiar with Chinese mooncakes, and I asked them to give me their honest opinions.

XU MENGQI SHANGHAI  "So which one do you prefer?"

UDEZE CHINEDU EMMANUEL, STUDENT SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY "I'll still lean towards the Suzhou type. I just like the feel of the outside, the flaky feel, coupled with the meat in it, the pork fillings. I think it's nice. I really prefer this one."

XU MENGQI SHANGHAI "Yeah, Ornella, what's your call?"

MALYAN ORNELLA, STUDENT SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY "I choose the Cantonese style. I like it, very sweet and really so beautiful."

XU MENGQI SHANGHAI "So Ornella and Emmanuel each prefers a different kind of mooncake. But still, the Cantonese style is the more commonly seen one in the market. Why is that? I took this question to a traditional bakery that makes both kinds of mooncakes."

XU WEI, BRAND DIRECTOR WUFANGZHAI "Probably because the Suzhou style is more modest by the look, yet the making of it is more complicated. The production of Cantonese mooncakes is already highly standardized, and you see all those moulds that make them look varied and colorful. But the meat mooncakes are still very much handmade. Different doughs are mixed to make the skin flaky, and with the meat fillings it has a multiple-layer texture. The Cantonese mooncakes are pre-packaged and readily edible, but the Suzhou-style ones can only be frozen and baked fresh at the shops."

So the mystery of why people would queue all night for these meat mooncakes is now effectively solved. The answer is simple: it is hot and tasty.

But whichever mooncake style you choose, what matters at the end of the day, is the time you spend with your friends and family and the happiness you create and share. After all, that is what the mid-autumn festival really is all about.

XMQ, CGTN, Shanghai.