The history of mooncakes and why we eat them
Celebrating the passage of time and seasons is nothing new in many cultures, especially those that surround the Lunar calendar.
Among the harvest festivals, where community, gratitude and ritual are at the forefront, many will find the prominence of the Mid-Autumn Festival, or a variation of it, across cultures and countries. On the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, lanterns are lit up, mooncakes are gifted and shared and families join together to celebrate.
At the centre of this nexus is the mooncake, a seasonal delicacy that is dense not only with filling but with culture and history. Centuries of cosmology, political rebellion and culinary symbolism are baked into the mooncake—sometimes literally.
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Mooncakes filled with red bean (Image: The Woks of Life)
The preparation of mooncakes at a bakery for Mid-Autumn Festival (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
The history of the festival dates back over 3,000 years, and the Chinese have celebrated the harvest during the autumn full moon since the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). Early forms of nature worship, specifically to the moon as a celestial deity, were foundational in many of the cultural celebrations we see in modern day China and its diaspora. Celebrated as a post-harvest ritual, it grew from a society that is deeply attuned to lunar cycles and used the moon to dictate planting and harvesting.
The festival started gaining popularity during the early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), with the emperor himself holding celebrations in his palace. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, it had become one of the main folk festivals in China and one of the most widely celebrated within Chinese culture.
Filled to the brim with symbolism, the mooncake itself is an open book to its purpose. Its circular form is directly tied to the shape of the moon and of family unity. Traditionally, you’ll find mooncakes filled with lotus paste, with a salted egg yolk encased, symbolising the full moon. With increasing globalisation, mooncakes now are filled with anything from matcha to ice cream, or wrapped in mochi among other variations.
A pastry worker makes Huizhou-style mooncakes in preparation for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. (Photo by Shi Yalei/VCG via Getty Images)
Mooncakes are quite a labour intensive snack (Photo by Shi Yalei/VCG via Getty Images)
With variations of mooncakes across China, you'll find them ranging from sweet to savoury (Photo by Shi Yalei/VCG via Getty Images)
This labour-intensive sweet was so revered for gifting in Hong Kong prior to its economic boom that “mooncake clubs” emerged in the 60s and 70s to help families afford them for elders and bosses.
Ube ice cream mooncakes (Image: Constellation Inspiration)
Variations of mooncakes are found across speciality bakeries, restaurants, and more (Image: Constellation Inspiration)
Chang'e, the goddess of the moon (Image: Wikipedia)
Hou Yi, the archer that shot down nine suns (Image: Wikipedia)
Encapsulated within the sweet pastry are years of folklore and mythology, with a popular one being the story of Chang’e, the goddess of the moon, and the wife of Hou Yi.
The story goes that a long time ago, ten suns ruled the sky and made life extremely difficult. People were suffering, the planet was burning, and there was no harvest. An archer, Hou Yi, shot down nine of the suns, saving the Earth from the scorching heat.
As a reward, he was gifted with an elixir of immortality. Here we find variations in the story, with some stating that Hou Yi became engulfed in his newfound fame, and others involving a jealous apprentice that tried to steal the elixir. In all versions, Chang’e ends up drinking it herself, where she floats up to the moon and resides there forever.
Hou Yi is heartbroken from losing his wife, and as he looks up to the moon, he displays an array of food and cakes that were previously adored by Chang’e, as a way to convey his love for her from a different planet.
A 14th-century Yuan Dynasty painting shows a high-ranking Mongol woman ascending a horse (Image: Atlas Obscura)
For its political history, mooncakes were also not always neutral on the scale. Used as a vessel for covert communication during the Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century, the legend holds that Han Chinese revolutionaries were plotting against their Mongol rulers and planned an uprising on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival through mooncakes. Communicating their plans through secretly embedded messages within the mooncakes, the innocent pastry transformed into a symbol of subversion and cultural resilience.
Rabbits are also highly associated with Mid-Autumn Festival, and it is said that Chang’e resides up in the moon with the companion of a rabbit sent to the moon by the Emperor of Heaven, who was moved by the rabbit’s act of self-sacrifice when it threw itself into a fire to feed the Emperor.
Kano Tsunenobu, “Rabbit, Wave, and Full Moon,” painting, 1683 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
The outline on the moon resembles the Jade Rabbit (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
The reverence for the autumn moon is not confined to just China, with many different cultures celebrating a festival within the same vein as the Mid-Autumn Festival.
In Korea, Chuseok (추석), also celebrated on the same lunar date, is a major harvest festival within Korea that has an emphasis on ancestral veneration. Instead of mooncakes, you’ll find songpyeon, crescent-shaped rice cakes made from rice flour kneaded with hot water, typically filled with sweet ingredients such as red beans, sesame seeds or chestnuts.
Traditionally they are steamed on a bed of pine needles that lend a unique aroma and flavour, and the half-moon shape symbolises the moon, and hopes for a prosperous future.
Songpyeon, made with rice flour and steamed (Image: Beyond Kimchee)
Offerings made during Korean observances of Chuseok (Image: Flower Gift Korea)
In Japan, Tsukimi, meaning moon-viewing, is a family-friendly moon-viewing fall harvest festival that has been celebrated since the Heian Era (784-1185 BCE) and adopted from Chinese culture. It is one of the most celebrated events in Japan. Families gather together to admire the moon, and eat tsukimi-dango, which are rice dumplings, along with other crops such as chestnuts and taro which are also given as offerings to the moon god.
Katsushika Hokusai, “Woman watching a rabbit row the crescent moon,” surimono print, 1819 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
The anthropology of the lunar calendar shows variations within similar cultures of harvest festivals, with some bigger than others but all united by the moon and ancient narrative. Ultimately, whether it’s through the joy of sharing a mooncake, the quality family time, or the festive feels, mooncakes reveal a deeply human impulse of connecting with the cycles of harvest, with each other and even across international borders. They act as a testament to how a single celestial body can inspire such rich diversity in cultural expression.
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