The Origin and Customs of Mid-Autumn Festival

Moon cake is the first food in Mid-Autumn Festival, and there are different opinions about its origin. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Shicheng (or Liu Bowen, the counselor of Zhu Yuanzhang), the leader of the anti-Yuan uprising in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, used the Mid-Autumn Festival people to give each other round cakes, which contained a note saying "Kill Tartars on August 15th". Everyone saw the note in the cake, and as expected, on this night, the "Tartars" (Yuan soldiers) who committed various crimes together ate cakes to celebrate the victory of the uprising. In a long historical period, even at the end of the last century, many moon cakes were still affixed with a small note! Unfortunately, the moon cakes produced in recent years have disappeared, and the "cultural code" passed down from generation to generation in moon cakes has also disappeared. There is also a saying that in the early years of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, General Xu Da captured Beijing, the capital occupied by the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty, and the good news spread to Nanjing, the capital. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Taizu who was playing chess, was ecstatic, that is, he announced that the Mid-Autumn Festival would be celebrated all over the world and rewarded his subjects with moon cakes that conveyed information during the anti-Yuan uprising. Since then, moon cakes have become the "legal" food for Mid-Autumn Festival, and must be eaten [1].

Moon cakes originally originated from Zhu Jie food in the Tang Dynasty. During the reign of Tang Gaozu, General Li Jing conquered the Turks through the hidden information of moon cakes, and returned home in triumph on August 15. Since then, eating moon cakes has become an annual custom. Turpan people who were doing business at that time presented cakes to the emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Gaozu Li Yuan took the gorgeous cake box, took out the round cake, smiled at the bright moon in the sky and said, "We're going to invite toads with Hu cakes." After that, share the cake with the ministers.

The word "moon cake" has been used in the book Liang Lumeng written by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty, but the description of enjoying the moon and eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival is recorded in the West Lake Travel Agency in the Ming Dynasty: "August 15th is called the Mid-Autumn Festival, and people use moon cakes to get together". In the Qing Dynasty, there were more records about moon cakes, and the production became more and more elaborate.