For many centuries the Chinese have celebrated special occasions
by giving moon cakes made from lotus nut paste. When china was
under occupation by the Mongols in the 13th and 14th centuries,
revolutionaries had to find a way to get messages to other Chinese
to plan an uprising. The story goes that Mongols didn't like lotus
nut paste so messages were hidden in moon cakes and this form
of food-based communication led to a successful uprising that
founded the Ming dynasty. So it became a tradition in China to
swap moon cakes containing happy messages to mark important occasions.
During the building of the great American railways, Chinese workers
didn't have moon cakes to swap and instead gave and received biscuits
containing messages, and the fortune cookie was born.
