Along the southeast coast, especially in Fújiàn 福建 and Zhèjiāng 浙江 provinces, people sometimes eat a kind of round cake with a hole in the middle, which they call “brightness cakes” (guāngbǐng 光饼). This is a story about how they came to have that name.
The coast of Zhèjiāng, Fújiàn and Guǎngdōng 广东 provinces is very rugged, full of inlets and islands and tiny harbors. This makes it easy for fishermen, but it also makes it easy for pirates and smugglers to conceal their activities. In the mid-1500s this environment attracted large numbers of pirates from Japan, who staged lightening raids on coastal settlements. The pirates were called Wōkòu 倭寇, or “Japanese bandits,” although the character wō 倭, an ancient term for Japan, had already become very impolite (and only the incorrigibly vulgar would use such a term today).
QĪ Jìguāng 戚继光 was an official in far-off Shāndōng 山东 province, but he had much knowledge of the Wōkòu, and had resolved to pacify the pirates and save the people of the coast. So he organized the Qī family army, a local militia, and he thereby successfully intimidated the pirate bands and kept them away from Shāndōng.
In view of this success, the emperor had Qī transferred to Zhèjiāng 浙江 province to try to achieve the same results there. After he waged several successful battles against pirates in Zhèjiāng, the pirates in that area also became afraid of him, and diverted their operations away from the places where his militia operated, for the most part farther south to the coast of Fújiàn province.
In 1562 Qī Jìguāng decided to move his operation to Fújiàn province, where it was said that over ten thousand pirates had now established themselves. He had great success, but also lost many men and moved back to Zhèjiāng. Immediately a large enclave of Wōkòu established itself in Xīnghuà 兴化 (modern Pútián 莆田) along the shore of Xīnghuà Bay, a large inlet.
As he began his move back south again from Zhèjiāng to Fújiàn, Qī Jìguāng knew that Wōkòu spies would be watching his progress. So before they crossed over from Zhèjiāng into Fújiàn, he ordered that each of his soldiers carry a heavy bag of sand. And as a result the army had to stop frequently to rest. This slowed their progress considerably, and the Wōkòu spies were quite surprised at how slowly they moved south.
Meanwhile at their encampment beside Xīnghuà Bay the chief pirates were very concerned about the possible arrival of the famed pirate hunter Qī and his private army of Wōkòu exterminators. They were delighted when their spies arrived to report that the famous Qī Family Army was much over-praised. In fact it could scarcely move across the land. At its present rate, it would take at least a week to reach Xīnghuà.
This was splendid news for the Wōkòu pirates. They knew they would have to move, but the enemy was less formidable than they had feared, and for the time being at least they could take their time to prepare. To keep up morale, they decided to hold a huge banquet the following evening.
Once he was sure the Wōkòu spies had left to go south and report how slowly his army traveled, Qī Jìguāng had his men shed their bags of sand and quicken their pace so as to arrive at Xīnghuà as soon as possible. And he had each man provisioned with a string of cakes with holes in the center, like bagels, that could be worn on a string around his neck, handy to be eaten without taking time to stop for meals. And thus the army continued its journey south, this time not slowly lumbering to fool the spies, but rather on a forced march to reach Xīnghuà as soon as possible. They reached Xīnghuà in one day and one night.
The pirates’ banquet was an affair of great merry making with dancing, singing, eating, fist-fighting, abusing women, torturing a few local people for fun, and above all drunkenness, until nearly everyone had eventually passed out drunk on the ground, except for a few who had killed each other in brawls.
And so when Qī Jìguāng’s army arrived, little effort was needed to capture the pirates except to tie them up.
The local populace was delighted, for the pirates had taken all they had, and they had been reduced to utter deprivation, and in many cases starvation. Qī Jìguāng therefore ordered his troops to distribute the remaining cakes with the holes in the middle to the local populace.
As is common in this part of China, people affectionately referred to Qī Jìguāng as “Ā-guāng 阿光,” from the last syllable of his name, and the cakes he gave to the starving are still made to this day and called “Guāng cakes” (Guāng bǐng 光饼), which of course also means “brightness cakes”!
Qī Jìngguāng continued to fight pirates along the coast of Fújiàn. When the pirate menace had largely been subdued, he was transferred north to the Great Wall to help secure the northern frontier against the Mongols. But that, of course, leads to other stories.