On the fifteenth day of the eighth month everyone eats moon cakes (yuèbǐng 月饼)., which have become more and more various and elaborate over the centuries. It is said that the kinds most prevalent today originated in Guǎngdōng 广东 and Jiangsū 江苏 provinces.
A tale is told of the siege of the Mongol capital of Sūzhōu 苏州 by the rebel leader and millenarian cultist ZHŪ Yuánzhāng 朱元璋, who took advantage of the custom of presenting moon cakes to relatives to send secret messages past the Mongol guards, baked inside moon cakes, fortune-cookie-fashion. As a result, Sūzhōu fell, and after it the rest of Mongol China, and Zhū became the first monarch of the Míng 明 dynasty (period 20).
Formerly in Fújiàn 福建 and Táiwān 台湾 there was a somewhat different kind of Mid-Autumn Cake (Zhōngqiū bǐng 中秋饼), and it was associated with different degrees in the civil service examinations: “Top Examinee” (zhuàngyuán 状元), “Second Place” (bǎngyǎn 榜眼), “Third Place” (tànhuā 探花), and so on.
These were an expression of familial support and good wishes, but superstitious people believed that eating an autumn cake with an appropriate title on it might actually help a student in an examination. (One version seems to work for American university examinations, but the recipe is being kept a closely guarded secret.)
This produced a dice game called “Catch the Top-Student Cake” (bó zhuàngyuán bǐng 博状元饼), which is no longer played.