It's the Mid-Autumn Festival again.
We Chinese the Mid-Autumn Festival, and we had to eat mooncakes. Whether you are in the south or the north, whether you like sweet or salty, the mooncake delegation is festive, and august 15 is always indispensable to this bite.
But unlike the Zongzi of the Dragon Boat Festival, when it comes to it, everyone can think of Qu Yuan's devotion to the Miluo River, and the people wrap the rice in rice with rice dumplings and throw it into the river in order to hold his body from being eaten by the fish.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > Mid-Autumn Festival, kill the Tartars, and welcome the rebels</h1>
Speaking of the origin of mooncakes, the first thing to say is that I heard the most about the version when I was a child. Almost every year in the Mid-Autumn Festival, the family will buy the kind of moon cake under the old-fashioned moon cake with a piece of oil-absorbent paper, and the elders will tell the children that this is the moon cake invented in order to "kill the tartar" to transmit the signal, you see the paper under the moon cake, it is written with it.
This story dates back to the last years of the Yuan Dynasty. If it is said that the shortest-lived ruling dynasty in history, it is estimated that the Yuan Dynasty can really rank in the top few. Anyone who has read the history of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties knows that the Yuan Dynasty people who ruled the land of China at that time did not seem to regard the Han people as people at all, and even some nobles proposed to kill the Han people and turn the land into grass so that they could herd sheep. It is commonplace to loot the people's fat and the people's ointment, and it is common for the people to live like grass and mustard.
For such a ruling class, the end is actually only a matter of time. Coupled with the fact that during the Yuan Shun Emperor's period, the heavens did not give face, and there was a drought for many years, so the Yuan nobles still levied violently in this situation, so the crowd rose up and echoed each other.
It is difficult to find a book that describes the story of the rebel army at that time like "The Biography of Sui and Tang Heroes", but because of the wide circulation of "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty", many people are familiar with the heroes of the time. Of course, the most famous is the beggar emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, and finally he established the Ming Dynasty in one fell swoop.
For all kinds of rebel armies, the Yuan Dynasty of course used the most powerful means to suppress. As the saying goes, it is difficult to become a forest of lone trees, and if the heroes of all walks of life do not unite to attack it in one fell swoop, then it is easy to be broken by each one. In order to unite all the people and horses, Zhu Yuanzhang's military master Liu Bowen thought of a way, he let people make a lot of cakes, and the cakes were placed with a note, which read, "Mid-Autumn Festival, kill the Tartars, welcome the rebels", and distribute them to the people. At that time, the people had been suffering for a long time, and naturally helped to pass it on.
As a result, the various armies received the news and responded, and the uprising was like a spark, and soon overthrew the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang lamented the merits of this cake, and later often made cakes on this day to reward the courtiers, and because this day was the Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone called it "moon cake".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > from ancient times to the Ming Dynasty, mooncakes began to be popular. </h1>
Although the story of mooncake and Zhu Yuanzhang's uprising sounds very exciting, it is not a reliable content of the history after all. We can find out if there was already a legend about mooncakes before the Ming Dynasty.
For example, go find poems written by Dongpo University scholars in the Song Dynasty who love to eat and love to write poetry.
There really is.
Su Dongpo once wrote in "Leaving Farewell and Honesty": "Small cakes are like chewing the moon, and there are crisps and dumplings." This shows that the Song Dynasty already had the custom of eating moon cakes, but the name at that time may have been called "palace cake".
By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the word "mooncake" appeared in Wu Zimu's "Dream LiangLu".
During the Ming Dynasty, the "West Lake Tour Zhihui" already had:
"August 15th is the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the folk leave mooncakes to take the righteousness of reunion"
The saying shows that mooncakes are really popular at this time.
The phenomenon is that for moon cakes, the custom of viewing the moon at the autumn equinox can be popular relatively early, and it is said that in ancient times, there was already a "festival of the moon". The Book of Rites and The Moon Order says: "The mid-autumn moon nourishes the elderly and eats porridge." It seems that the popular snack at that time was not a mooncake.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > mooncake "strange saying"</h1>
It seems that mooncakes existed before the Ming Dynasty, but in different periods, the names and fashion trends varied.
Not only that, but the filling is also new every year.
I remember when I was a child, the most common mooncakes were five kernels, green and red silk, and rock sugar. The outer crust is generally a shiny Cantonese mooncake, or a puff pastry Su-style mooncake.
Nowadays, it is different, in previous years, the popular jam mooncake, ice skin mooncake, and now there are more flowing heart mooncakes. In addition to the common egg yolks, black sesame seeds, and hundred fruits, there are pine blossom eggs and even snail powder.
1. Strange mooncake of "leek egg mooncake"
Many northerners love to eat leek boxes, leek dumplings. There was once a movie that said, "As long as there is a leek box, give a county magistrate not to change." "The leeks are delicious, but they are eaten well, and others inevitably have to endure it." As the new saying goes: no matter how good the perfume is, it can't dry a leek box.
Someone really made this mouthful into a mooncake.
2. Strange Mooncake "Pine Blossom Egg Mooncake"
Pine blossom eggs are a delicious dish, but because of the strange taste and strange color, foreigners who first know this delicious dish are always a bit discouraged. We have eaten egg yolk mooncakes are not a few people, if it is pine blossom egg filling, do you dare to taste it?
3. Strange mooncake of "snail powder mooncake"
Snail powder, which smells and eats fragrant, is now all over the country. But have you ever eaten snail flour mooncakes?
It is said that as early as 2020, a food factory in Guangxi launched this mooncake, and more than 10,000 gift boxes were sold out in a week as soon as they were listed. Just don't know if it's really delicious? Or is it just for the sake of novelty?
Compared with the above three, what instant noodles, crayfish, spicy chicken mooncakes can only be small witches.
I don't know if you found out when you bought the mooncake, today's mooncake box is more and more exquisite, more and more high-end, the mooncake inside is more and more "small and exquisite".
What is the filling of your mooncake this year?
Mooncakes are delicious, but don't be greedy, after all, high sugar and high oil, eating more does more harm than good.