Birthday cake was introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty around the early 20th
century. As a symbol of Western culture and commodity economy, its popularity is
closely related to the political climate of the modern and contemporary era. Inspired
by food anthropology, this essayistic archive film investigates the spread and
localization of birthday cakes and their associated rituals in China and oversea
Chinese communities. It also examines the critical influence of birthday party services provided by KFC and McDonald's, which entered China after the economic reforms of the 1980s. The investigation covers newspaper, news, films, family archives and Chinese-style cake decoration tutorial.