According to legend, more than 1,000 years ago, Yuan Zhen, a poet of the Tang Dynasty who served as imperial censor, was offended by eunuchs and old-fashioned bureaucrats, and was relegated to Tongzhou (now Dazhou) as a secretary. A yen Zhen to a hotel to drink, drink dishes in the beef slices of thin flavor, no dregs in the mouth, he was quite appreciated, and immediately named it "lampshade beef". Lampshade, that is, shadow theater, with the light made of animal skin or cardboard silhouettes of the characters projected onto the curtain. With "lampshade" to call this beef, see the thinness of its meat, thin to the light can be seen through the object, as in the shadow theater curtain.

In the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, a man surnamed Liu from Liangping County lived in Dazhou and started his business as a barbecue and meat brine cook. At first, he made thick and hard slices of five-spice beef, which was hard to chew and easy to stuff teeth, and the sales were not good. Later, Liu's day and night thinking, gradually improved, will be cut into large and thin beef, marinated in flavor, and then baked on the fire, sold also drizzled with sesame oil. The beef thus produced was crispy and flavorful, and became very popular in the market. The businessman surnamed Liu prospered and became rich as a result. Others see profitable, have imitated, lampshade beef gradually become a major product of Sichuan.