It’s that time of the year again.

With stalls popping up in supermarkets, and grocery stores stocking their shelves with mooncakes and lanterns, everyone and their grandmother knows that the Mid-Autumn Festival is here.

Local confectionaries must be rejoicing as they heat up their ovens and take out the mooncake moulds for incoming orders. Same goes for Chinese restaurants as they fill up their reservation books for family dinners.

Never mind that Malaysia does not experience autumn; it is still a good time for a family reunion and a lovely feast.

But as you’re wolfing down whole mooncakes, has it ever crossed your mind where these tasty pastries came from?

For most Chinese Malaysians, there are a few stories that are told about the origin of mooncakes.

The first being set in the final years of the Yuan Dynasty, when the Ming rebels began to plot the overthrow of the Mongol emperor.

To spread the call for an uprising on the day of the autumn equinox, messages were hidden in the mooncakes and distributed to the Han Chinese populace.

So, in celebration of the successful uprising, the mooncake became an emblem of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

In another folk legend, the Tang Emperor, Taizong, was given some cakes to celebrate his successful military campaign against the Xiongnu tribes. The tradition of eating these cakes has persisted since then.

The myth behind mooncakes

There is also a mythological backstory regarding the origins of these seasonal desserts, though the following is just one of many versions.

In the distant past, the Jade Emperor had ten unruly sons, who decided to torment humanity by turning into ten suns, pardon the pun, surrounding the earth.

The resultant heat made life untenable for humanity and the Emperor’s demands that they cease their shenanigans went unheeded.

In desperation, the Emperor called on Hou Yi, the Divine Archer, to deal with the problem and the latter succeeded, by shooting down all but one sun.

In a case of “That’s not what I meant!”, the Emperor was livid that Hou Yi had killed nine of his sons, so, the Emperor threw Hou Yi and his wife, Chang’e, out of heaven, stripping them of their immortality.

At first, they took their unfortunate situation rather poorly, finding mortal life difficult after an easy existence as deities. They also found the concept of mortality itself daunting.

Striving to regain their divinity, Hou Yi set out on an arduous journey westward to Mount Kunlun, where the Queen Mother of the West resided, to ask for her help.

Feeling sympathetic for the archer, the Queen Mother gave him a small amount of the Elixir of Immortality, enough for only one mortal to gain immortality.

With the elixir being made from sacred peaches that grew every 6,000 years, wasting the elixir was obviously not an option.

Despite their desire to regain their divinity, Hou Yi and Chang’e were unwilling to leave each other behind in the mortal realm, so they decided to keep away the elixir for the time being.

Afterwards, they lived and eventually adjusted to a normal human life.

However, trouble appeared on the horizon some years later as Feng Meng, an apprentice of Hou Yi, learnt of the elixir and sought to take it for himself.

While Hou Yi was out hunting, Feng Meng broke into the house and attacked Chang’e, demanding the elixir.

Realising that she was the only one who could stop the cruel scoundrel from becoming a god, Chang’e sacrificed herself by drinking the elixir and regaining immortality.

A divine being once more, she was unable to live on Earth alongside her husband, and chose to reside on the Moon, instead of heaven, to be closer to him.

Having lost his wife, Hou Yi would, for the rest of his mortal life, leave cakes and fruits as offerings to the Moon-bound Chang’e. His act thus sparked the creation of mooncakes as a way to honour Chang’e’s selflessness.

In addition to this, the tale of Hou Yi and Chang’e is also the reason why China has the tendency of naming its lunar landers Chang’e.

On the packaging of many mooncakes, Chang’e is depicted together with a rabbit, the Jade Rabbit of another Chinese myth.

In any case, it goes without saying that there’s never a better day than the Mid-Autumn Festival to call friends and family over for a hearty meal of mooncakes, and send the kids out with lanterns.