2. The earliest word moon cake appeared in Liang Lumeng written by Wu in the Southern Song Dynasty. At that time, moon cakes were diamond-shaped, coexisting with chrysanthemum cakes, plum cakes and five-kernel cakes, and they were "available at any time, ready to eat, and never let go of customers". It can be seen that moon cakes at this time are not only eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Later, it evolved into a circle, meaning reunion and beauty.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, eating a kind of "palace cake" on Mid-Autumn Festival was very popular in the court. Slowly spread to the people, people called this kind of cake "small cake" and "moon ball". Su Dongpo has a poem: "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, crisp and thick".
In Ming dynasty, eating moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival gradually became popular among the people. At that time, ingenious bakers printed the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon's fairy tales on moon cakes as food art drawings, making moon cakes a necessary food for Mid-Autumn Festival.
In Qing dynasty, eating moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival has become a common custom, and there are more and more kinds of moon cakes. Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Guangzhou and Chaozhou have begun to take shape. Moreover, before and after the Mid-Autumn Festival in Yue Bai, there are many local folk customs, such as the "cloth champion" in Jiangnan: cut the moon cake into three pieces, stack it together, and put the biggest one below, which is the "champion"; The medium is placed in the middle, which is the "second place"; The smallest one is on the top, which is "flower exploration". Then the whole family rolls dice, and whoever has the most numbers is the champion, eating big pieces; Followed by the second place, exploring flowers and playing games for fun.