A Dali's home-style moon cake is packaged in a peice of red oily paper. [Photo/ Lin Jian]

A Dali's home-style moon cake is put in a winnowing basket. [Photo/ Lin Jian]

In Dali's villages, villagers would like to make moon cakes by themselves.

Every year three or four days before the Mid-autumn festival, Dali villagers will prepare materials for making the moon cakes.

Wheat flour, brown sugar, rapeseed oil, walnut kernel, peanut kernel, these are normal original food materials that each Dali villager would like to prepare.

People, old and young, all expect to taste the first baked moon cake which is made of materials they provide.

Therefore, moon making chefs in the villages become the busiest persons who shall make cakes to satisfy all these people's needs at the time.

All moon cakes are made in a standard size, with a width of 17 cm, and a depth of 3 cm according to the tradition.

The Dali's home-style moon cake is cut off into a triangle-formed piece.[Photo/ Lin Jian]

The Dali's home-style moon cake tastes very delicious, blending oily flavor with sweet flavor.[Photo/ Lin Jian]

The Dali's home-style moon cake looks very attractive both to local people and tourists.[Photo/ Lin Jian]

People who offer more food materials to make moon cakes, they will bring more cakes back to home. People who bring less materials for making, they will take less bake. No one would violate this regulation.

Indeed, all materials will be weighed on a public scale in advance.

Village chefs may make cakes that are not very oily or sweet, so that everyone in the same village can accept the same taste of the moon cake.

According to a local custom, each freshly baked moon cake will be put into a winnowing basket.

No matter how many food materials are added in the moon cakes, and what tastes the moon cakes may give, all cakes lying on the basket look round, smell fragrant, standing for an archaic tradition that is inherited by the locals.

Click here to view Chinese report.

(Editors: Cathy Chen, Lynn)