It's Mooncake Festival finally... ^_^
Ever wondered how Mooncake Festival originated ?

 

 

Eons ago, 10 disobedient suns caused drought and death by all gallivanting in the skies when they were supposed to take turns roaming the heavens. Houyi, a talented archer, shot down nine of the scorching orbs.

People celebrated their beloved hero and came to him to learn martial arts. During this time, Houyi met and married Chang’e, a beautiful, virtuous woman.

The story diverges here, but one of the more popular versions says Houyi went to Kunlun Mountain, where the gods lived, and obtained an immortality pill from Xi Wangmu, the Goddess of the West. He gave it to Chang’e for safekeeping.

While Houyi was away, an evil disciple, Peng Meng, tried to steal the pill. Instead of handing the treasure over, Chang’e swallowed it and immediately floated to the moon.

Houyi spent his days and nights lamenting the loss of his wife. He put an incense table in his yard and put out a spread of Chang’e’s favorite foods, which included moon cakes. People followed suit in camaraderie with their hero and to pray that goddess Chang’e bring them happiness and safety.

 

And how about Mooncakes ?

 

 

 

There is a folk tale about the overthrow of the Mongol rule facilitated by messages smuggled in moon cakes.
Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries in their espionage effort to secretly distribute letters to overthrow the Mangolian rulers of China in the Yuan Dynasty. The idea is said to have been conceived by Zhu Yuan Zhang (朱元璋) and his advisor Liu Bo Wen (劉伯溫), who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading, and the only way to prevent it was to eat special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.
Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. To read the encrypted message, each of the four mooncakes packaged together must be cut into four parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message.

Another version is the people who had received moon cakes broke them, (instate of having secreat messages printed on the surface of the mooncake.)  they found that the cakes all contained slips of paper inside with a written message on them saying “Every household gets ready to kill the Yuan soldiers on Mid-Autumn night”.

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