Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated for a few meaningful reasons. One of it is during the Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century, whereby the Mongolians are ruling the Central Plains, also known as China. To spread the information of the attack on a fateful night, Liu Bowen, the advisor of the Chinese rebel leader, Zhu Yuan Zhang, came up with an idea to coincide with this festival. He inserted slips of paper into the mooncake to pass the message to the people to overthrow the Mongolian emperor. Later, Zhu established himself as the emperor of the new dynasty known as the Ming Dynasty, and hence Mid Autumn festival is widely celebrated with mooncakes till now.
There is one main traditional filling in mooncakes, and it is lotus paste. It is always coupled with some roughly ground nuts such as almonds or peanuts. Another popular flavour is lotus paste with preserved duck egg yolks! Though a weird taste, comprising sweet and a tinge of saltiness, it is considered one of the most original flavours. The egg yolk is a symbolism of a full moon.
However, as time goes by with innovation and creativity, we can find hundreds of varieties; ranging from the traditional lotus paste to red date paste and even durian, banana, strawberry, green tea, coffee, chocolate paste and so on…
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