Gustatory Stenography: Mooncakes as a Vessel for Covert Communication in China

Mooncakes or yuebing are a staple of the Mid-Autumn festival in China. With their growing popularity in recent years, the mooncake industry is estimated to be worth more than $2.3 billion. According to a scholar of Chinese literature and theatre at the University of Sydney in Australia, Xiaohuan Zhao, “Mooncakes symbolize unity, union, and harmony. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, family members gather together to taste mooncakes as a symbol of family reunion. Its round shape represents a full life, perfection, and good luck.” Beyond their symbolic and cultural history, mooncakes also reportedly, according to legend and history, have been a vessel for political messaging in efforts to avoid government censorship and detection. This practice dates back to the fall of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, when revolutionaries used mooncakes to transmit secret messages. Even in modern times, mooncakes were used to spread political messages in Hong Kong during the 2019 protests to avoid CCP censorship. By recreating an ancient recipe of mooncakes and attempting to craft a message into them, we hope to discover the commitment of the revolutionaries and the lengths they were willing to go to overcome oppressive government action. To do so, we recreate “Imperial Scholar Liu’s Mooncakes,” a recipe from Yuan Mei’s Manual of Gastronomy. We also look at to what extent can a mooncake carrier can be effective. By studying communication with mooncakes across centuries, we can also gain insight into the long history of constraints on the flow of information within China. While we cannot determine whether mooncakes were actually used as a method of rebellion, we do find that mooncakes could have been an effective method for covert communication.

Mooncakes are typically a small treat with a golden crust that has a soft and sweet filling on the inside. The filling is typically red bean paste, pork, or lotus seed paste. Oftentimes, one may find an egg yolk in the center. Other fillings in modern times often can include chocolate, cheesecake, or even ice cream. Mooncakes are heavily linked to the Mid-Autumn Festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the end of the harvest season, and people pray and make offerings to the gods for their harvest. One common practice during the festival is eating and gifting mooncakes. (Yang)

Mid-Autumn Festival Celebrations

Mooncakes have existed since the Shang Dynasty during the 17th century B.C.E., when they were called taishi cakes. These cakes, which were round, were used as gifts to the Emperor during the Tang Dynasty for his successful northern conquests. Mooncakes got their name from the Tang Emperor’s concubines. This was because during a full moon, the shape of the cakes resembles the roundness of a full moon. Eventually, under the Mongol rule of North China during the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century A.D., the Mongols established a strict social hierarchy where Mongols were at the top of the pyramid and the Chinese were at the bottom. Despite the lack of popularity, Kublai Khan was able to maintain order by updating China’s infrastructure for transportation and communication. However, after the death of Kublai Khan and the lack of consistent leadership, such advanced achievements deteriorated. These complications led to further loss in popularity and the downfall of the Mongols’ Empire. The rising Ming Dynasty in East China had been placing more and more pressure on the Yuan. As the Mings wanted to push the Mongols out of power, they would need to organize a wide web and network of everyday people to organize a coup d'état that happened simultaneously. The issue was that the Mongol government was actually quite effective at regulating communication. The rebels would need to create their own form of communicative tradecraft to organize such a massive endeavor. Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the Ming Dynasty, is credited with coming up with the idea of secretly communicating with people through mooncakes.  Because the Mongols placed a lower value on Chinese culture in social hierarchy, they did not eat mooncakes; therefore, messages in mooncakes would likely go undetected. However, this method of covert communication is disputed among scholars. Some think it is a myth, while others believe it to be fact. The reason why some believe it is a myth is that the legend became most prominent during the early 20th century. They believe it became prominent as a commercial effort to sell more mooncakes. However, most accounts of the legend and scholars do believe that some form of covert communication did exist at the time, including using food. (Tchea)

Zhu Yuanzhang

Imprinting method for communicating with mooncakes

Two methods of tradecraft were created using mooncakes. The first and more complicated method was imprinting the message on top of the mooncake.`This was done using four mooncakes and then cutting each one up into quarters. Then the person would rearrange the pieces to form a message. One message that Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to spread to people was, “On the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, kill all the Mongols!” (Cooking History)

The other, less complex method that I base my reconstruction on is by simply placing a note inside the filling of the mooncake itself. To recreate this method of covert communication, in the experimental design phase, I knew that the best chance of success would be finding a recipe in which minimal wet ingredients, such as custard and fruit, were used. This was because moisture within the mooncake would lead to a greater chance that the message would come out unclear. The recipe that I decided to go with was “Imperial Scholar Liu’s Mooncakes” from Yuan Mei’s Manual of Gastronomy. This manual is a book full of recipes written during the Qing Dynasty by Yuan Mei. Yuan Mei was a poet of the Qing Dynasty who also did a lot of gastronomic work. While at the time, gastronomy was heavily focused on innovating culinary techniques and flavor, Yuan was more focused on preserving tradition. One issue with using this source for the reconstruction would be that the recipe was written in the Qing Dynasty rather than earlier in the Yuan or even the Ming Dynasty. However, because the source is dedicated to preserving traditional cooking techniques and recipes, the recipe that I would be using for the reconstruction would have a lesser probability of containing contemporary techniques for the time. On top of that, I would only be using ingredients that would have been available at the time of the rebellion against the Mongols, which would mitigate these concerns, as the creation would be something that could have been easily created during that time. (Newman)

For this recreation, our ultimate question is whether using mooncakes could have been a feasible mode of covert communication. To help solve this problem, I specifically look at how the mooncake might affect the clarity of the secret message. As previously mentioned, I picked a recipe that used minimal wet ingredients:

Use flying flour from Dongshan to make a flaky oil pastry crust. Grind pine nuts, walnuts, and melon seeds into a fine powder and add small amounts of rock sugar and lard to make the filling. When eaten, it does not taste excessively sweet, and is also fragrant, flaky, soft, and rich—something truly extraordinary. (Yuan)

We had to adjust this recipe in a few areas. Firstly, when making the dough, we found the “flying flour” is most likely finely milled white wheat flour, and because getting some from Dongshan is unreasonable, we used standard baking flour. Secondly, as the store was out of melon seeds, two alternatives were discovered during quick research: pumpkin and sunflower seeds. As pumpkins did not exist in China during the time, and as sunflower seeds were becoming popular during the time, I chose to use the sunflower seeds to remain faithful. The translation of melon seeds could also be wrong, as most people in China often say “eat melon seeds” when actually referring to sunflower seeds. (Jeffery)

I first ground all of the nuts and rock sugar together; this took a long time to make the mixture a fine powder, as well as the right sweetness. Then I added a little bit of lard to make the nut mixture into a paste. I then formed the paste into a tiny ball and placed it at the center of a piece of the dough mixture.

For the message, I decided to use pen and paper, as that is what the message would have been at the time. In order to test the clarity of the message, I had two groups: one in which the message was big, and another in which the message was small. Then, to provide the most amount of security for the message, I rolled the piece of paper up. The purpose of rolling was to allow for the message to neatly fit into the mooncake, to protect the message from existing moisture, but as well as allow for a bigger message. After securing the message in the mooncakes, I baked them at 375℉ for five to seven minutes. Because paper burns at 451℉, the temperature and the duration would prevent the message from catching fire. I found that when taking the precautions of rolling up the message as well as using dry ingredients, the message in the mooncake came out quite clear, and that the bigger the writing was, the clearer the message could be.

Other notes of discovery include that if the note is too big in the mooncake, the note is detectable from the outside. Also, as carrying these messages would be a capital offense if caught, one precaution that a courier could take is eating the mooncake with the message to avoid detection if they are in trouble.

While this experiment was successful in demonstrating that using mooncakes could have been an effective method for covert communication, it still does not prove that it was used, and simple recreation cannot be used to prove that; however, what we can do to improve the experiment is to recreate it more accurately to the historical conditions. One way in which we can improve this experiment is by using a type of paper and pen. If we used paper and pen that were actually used during the time, we could more adequately test the level at which message clarity becomes an issue. Was paper at the time more susceptible to moisture, and did the ink smear more? Another way in which we could test this is by finding a popular recipe for mooncakes that was used during the Yuan dynasty for better testing. We could also try a recipe that uses wet ingredients such as custard to further test the durability of the messages.

The Moon and the Melon - Pa Ta

Overall, I would say my reconstruction does reinforce current literature that advocates that mooncakes were used as a method of secret communication during the rebellion against the Mongols by the Ming. The most widely cited literature on this matter includes Yang Lemei’s “China’s Mid-Autumn Day” account in the Journal of Folklore Research. In this account, she researches both the mythology of the Mid-Autumn festival, including the Legend of Chang’e, and the historical legends like the use of mooncakes. The research mainly illustrates how these stories have been passed down for many generations; therefore, explaining that these stories originate from somewhere. Thus, being a historical legend, there may be some truth in the legend. (Yang) In Wen Fong’s “Stages in the Life and Art of Chu Ta” in the Archives of Asian Art, Fong explains how in Pa-Ta’s artwork The Moon and the Melon, dated to 1689, there is a reference to mooncakes in the cryptic poem attached to it:

I see a large mooncake;

The moon is full, and the watermelon is ready.

Everyone points to the mooncake.

In the donkey year, the melon ripens at the appointed hour.

The mooncake was actually a reference to the rebellion against the Mongols, demonstrating the long history of this legend as well as the long history of mooncakes being used in seditious manners. (Fong)

Mooncake design from 2019 Hong Kong Protests

Mooncakes as a symbol of unity and defiance against corrupt power are further shown in a contemporary light during the 2019 Hong Kong Protests. During the protests, people were fighting against an extradition bill that would allow the Hong Kong government to detain and transfer criminals to Taiwan and China. The main criticism was that this would allow the government to more easily arrest political activists. As a form of protest because the government could censor online communication, people stamped the phrase “No withdrawal, no dismissal” into mooncakes and dispersed them among the masses as a way to avoid censorship. These protests demonstrate the effect of mooncakes in a natural environment. (Tan)

Overall, this research and reconstruction demonstrate that it is quite feasible and even effective. While we cannot confirm its existence, the method of using mooncakes to disguise messages, while remaining coherent, could have and does work. This ultimately demonstrates that the revolutionaries of China had the creative mindset and initiative to overcome oppressive government action, illuminating that the current issue of information suppression is not new and may require old spycraft to outmaneuver in a day of increased presence of technology and corporations’ and governments’ ability to control such.

Works Cited

Cooking history. “The Dessert That Ended an Empire, the Mooncake.” YouTube, 9 Aug. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6K7SB7zYuk.

Fong, Wen. “Stages in the Life and Art of Chu Ta (A.D. 1626-1705).” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 40, 1987, pp. 6–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111169.

Jeffrey, W. “How We Fall in Love with Cha Cha Sunflower Seeds?” PandaYoo, 26 July 2020, pandayoo.com/post/how-we-fall-in-love-with-cha-cha-sunflower-seeds/.

Newman, Jacqueline. “Yuan Mei: China’s Great Gastronome.” Flavorandfortune.com, 2025, www.flavorandfortune.com/ffdataaccess/article.php?ID=747. Accessed 1 May 2025.

Tan, Shelly. “Analysis | How Protesters Bake Political Rebellion into Mooncakes.” Washington Post, 21 Sept. 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/food/interactive/2023/mooncake-political-protest-rebellion/.

Tchea, Michelle. “The Rebellious History of Mooncakes, the Note-Passing Dessert That Liberated China.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Sept. 2024, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-rebellious-history-of-mooncakes-the-note-passing-dessert-that-liberated-china-180985046/.

Yang Lemei. “China’s Mid-Autumn Day.” Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 43, no. 3, 2006, pp. 263–70. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4640212.

Yuan, Mei. The Way of Eating: Yuan Mei's Manual of Gastronomy, edited by J. S. Chen Sean, Berkshire Publishing Group, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,  https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/wustl/detail.action?docID=5987854.