The source of Mid-Autumn Festival, why eat moon cakes?

Moon cake is the first food in Mid-Autumn Festival, and there are different opinions about its origin. A talk about Mid-Autumn moon cakes in Jiangsu at the end of Yuan Dynasty.

Zhang Shicheng, the leader of Taizhou Anti-Yuan Uprising (or Liu Bowen, the counselor of Zhu Yuanzhang), took advantage of the crowded Mid-Autumn Festival to give each other round cakes, which contained a note of "Killing Tartars on the night of August 15th". Everyone saw the note in the cake, just like a "Tatar" (Yuan Bing) who personally committed various crimes that night. Afterwards, everyone ate cakes to celebrate the victory of the uprising, and officially called the round cakes of the Mid-Autumn Festival moon cakes. 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].

During the Republic of China, the moon cake market in Nanjing was a "three-point world" with Guangdong style, Soviet style and local style. Cantonese fillings are mainly ham, jujube paste and coconut paste, with Guanshengyuan as the leading manufacturer, followed by Dasanyuan and Kangleyuan. They used massive advertising as a means to publish huge advertisements in newspapers and decorate neon lights in windows. The famous Suzhou-Hong Kong manufacturers include Xiao Suzhou, Taiping Village and Daoxiang Village. The advertising production has the characteristics of Shanghai style and likes to engage in gimmicks. The quality of Soviet-style moon cakes is not worse than that of Guangbang, but the price is cheaper. Therefore, after the holiday, financial resources are better than Guangbang. Guangbang's customers are dignitaries and businessmen; Su Gang's customers are mostly well-off families; The general public is happy to join this gang. Although its fillings are only two kinds of meat, five kernels and plain salt and pepper, more than 100 dim sum shops in the city are old brands. They don't decorate the window, let alone advertise, but they all win customers by quality, honesty and low price, and their market share is worse than that of Guangbang and Su Bang.