Mid-Autumn Festival, a traditional festival in China, falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month every year. August is the second month of autumn, which was called Mid-Autumn in ancient times. Because it is in the middle of autumn and August, it is called Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Autumn Evening, August Festival, August Half-Day, Moon Evening and Moon Festival, and because the moon is full on this day, it symbolizes reunion and is also called Reunion Festival.
Moon cakes are the first food in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and there are many opinions about their origins. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhang Shicheng, the leader of the anti-Yuan uprising in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province (or Liu Bowen, Zhu Yuanzhang's counselor), used the Mid-Autumn Festival people to give each other round cakes, and the note "Kill the Tatar on the night of August 15" was included in the cake. Everyone saw the note in the cake, and it spread widely, as promised, the "Tatar" (Yuan Bing) who did all kinds of evils together on this night, and then everyone ate cakes to celebrate the victory of the uprising, and officially. In a long historical period, even at the end of last century, many moon cakes were still affixed with a small piece of paper! Unfortunately, in recent years, the moon cakes produced have disappeared, and the "cultural code" passed down from generation to generation in moon cakes has disappeared. Another theory is that in the early years of Ming Hongwu, general Xu Da captured Beijing, the capital of the Yuan Dynasty, where the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty were entrenched, and the good news spread to Nanjing, the capital. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Taizu, who was playing chess, was ecstatic, that is, he proclaimed 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 of Mid-Autumn Festival, and they must be eaten [1].
Mid-Autumn Festival
Mooncakes originally originated from the food for celebrating the victory of the Tang army. During Tang Gaozu's reign, the general Li Jing conquered the Turks by the hidden message of mooncakes, and returned home triumphantly on August 15th. Since then, eating mooncakes has become an annual custom. At that time, Turpan people who were doing business presented cakes to the emperor of the Tang Dynasty. Gao Zu Li Yuan took the gorgeous cake box, took out the round cakes, smiled at the bright moon in the sky and said, "We should invite toads with Hu cakes." After that, share the cake with the ministers.
The word "moon cake" has been used in Wu Zimu's book "Dream of the Liang" in the Southern Song Dynasty. However, the description of enjoying the moon and eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival was only recorded in the West Lake Touring Society in the Ming Dynasty: "August 15th is called the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the people take the meaning of reunion with moon cakes". By the Qing Dynasty, there were more records about moon cakes, and the production became more and more elaborate.
During the development of the Republic of China, the mooncake market in Nanjing was divided into three parts: Cantonese style, Soviet style and local style. The Cantonese style fillings were mainly ham, jujube paste and coconut paste, and the manufacturers were led by Guanshengyuan, followed by Dasanyuan and Kangleyuan. They used a huge advertising campaign as a means to publish huge advertisements in newspapers and decorate neon lights in the window. The famous Su Gang manufacturers are Xiao Suzhou, Taiping Village and Daoxiang Village, which have Shanghai-style characteristics in advertising production and love to engage in gimmicks; The quality of Soviet-style moon cakes is not inferior to that of Guangbang, but the price is cheaper. Therefore, after the holiday, the financial resources are better than Guangbang. Guangbang's customers are dignitaries and businessmen; The customers of Su Gang are mostly well-off families; While the general public is happy to go to this gang. Although its fillings are just two kinds of meat, five kernels and plain salt and pepper, more than 1 shops in this gang's dim sum shops in the city are also old-fashioned, and they don't decorate windows or advertise, but they all win customers by quality, integrity and low price, and their market share is even worse than that of the gang and the Soviet gang. With the development of moon cakes today, there are more varieties and different flavors. Among them, Beijing-style, Soviet-style, Guangdong-style and Chaozhou-style moon cakes are widely enjoyed by people all over China. On the night of the festival, people also like to eat some reunion fruits such as watermelons, and wish their families a happy, sweet and safe life.
eat moon cakes to show "reunion". Moon cakes, also known as Hu cakes, palace cakes, moon groups, harvest cakes, reunion cakes, etc., are offerings to worship the moon god in ancient Mid-Autumn Festival. According to legend, in ancient China, emperors had a ritual system of offering sacrifices to the sun in spring and the moon in autumn. In the folk, every Mid-Autumn Festival in August, there are also customs about Yue Bai or offering sacrifices to the moon. The famous proverb "The moon is full on August 15th, and the moon cakes in Mid-Autumn Festival are sweet and fragrant" tells the custom of urban and rural people eating moon cakes on Mid-Autumn Festival night. At first, mooncakes were used as sacrifices to the moon god. Later, people gradually regarded the Mid-Autumn Festival as a symbol of family reunion, and gradually, mooncakes became a necessary gift for festivals.
Moon cakes are round, and the dynasty endowed with the meaning of reunion is the Ming Dynasty. Liu Dong's "A Brief Introduction to the Scenery of the Imperial Capital" says: "When the moon is sacrificed on August 15th, its fruit cakes will be round." Tian Rucheng's Notes on Visiting the West Lake said: "The 15th of August is called Mid-Autumn Festival, and the people also take mooncakes as a symbol of reunion." In Miscellaneous Notes of Wan Department, Shen Bang also described the grand occasion of making moon cakes in Beijing during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Ming Dynasty: all the people in the Fang Dynasty "made moon cakes with different sizes, so they were called moon cakes. The market is even filled with fruit, and the name is different. There is a cake worth hundreds of dollars. " Ingenious cake-making workers are surprisingly renovated, and various patterns are made on the moon cakes. Peng Yunzhang's "Youzhou Folk Songs" describes: "The moon palace symbol is painted as a jade rabbit kiln dwelling; Moon palace cake, made of silver toad purple house shadow. A pair of toad rabbits are all over the world, regretting the year when Chang 'e stole medicine; I can't go back to the cold, and I am in Danyan. " In the Qing Dynasty, eating moon cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival has become a common custom, and the production skills are getting higher and higher. Yuan Mei, a Qing dynasty, introduced in Suiyuan Food List: "Crispy moon cakes are filled with pine nuts, walnuts, melon seeds, rock sugar and lard, which are not sweet, fragrant, soft and greasy, which is unusual." Moon cakes in Beijing are the first made by Qianmen Zhimeizhai. Throughout the country, five flavor series of Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Guangzhou and Chaozhou have been formed, and many local folk customs have also emerged around the Mid-Autumn Festival in Yue Bai and enjoying the moon. For example, the "Buzhuangyuan" in Jiangnan: the moon cake is cut into three pieces, big, medium and small, stacked together, and the largest one is placed 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 "exploring flowers". Then the whole family rolls dice, and whoever has the most numbers is the champion, eating large pieces; In turn, it is the second place, exploring flowers, and playing games for fun.
Today, the custom of playing under the moon is far less popular than in the old days. However, feasting to enjoy the moon is still very popular. People drink wine in asking for the moon to celebrate a better life, or wish their relatives far away healthy and happy, and have a wonderful time with their families.