In China, the ninth month of the ninth day in the lunar calendar is the Chongyang Festival, which is also called Double Ninth Day. The Chongyang cake, alias “huagao” (literally, flower cake), is the food for Chongyang Festival in the Han Chinese tradition. Dating back to the Southern Dynasty, it is popular in most of the places in China, and as it is made for the Chongyang Festival, thus the name Chongyang cake. The cake is mostly made of rice powder and nuts, but the processing method varies in different regions, mainly including baking and steaming. The cake would be filled with stuffing, decorated with five-color flags, and molded with two-goat pattern, implying the name “double yang” (in Chinese, goat is pronounced as “yang”, two goats carry the meaning “chongyang”), which is still popular nowadays.

Cultural connotations

The making method and eating custom of Chongyang cake vary in different places, so do its origin and connotations of folklore culture.

It is generally recognized that Chongyang cake originated from the Chongyang Festival’s tradition of climbing heights. As restricted by the landform and resources, it was usually not convenient for the common urban residents to ascend heights, so they replaced height climbing custom with eating Chongyang cake (in Chinese, “糕” [cake] and “高” [height] have the same pronunciation).

Another saying suggests that the cultural connotation of Chongyang cake focuses on the character “糕”, the partial tone of which suggests promotion and high rank.

In addition, many ethnic minorities in South China such as Yi, Bai, Dong, She, Bouyi, Tujia, Helao, etc also keep the tradition of celebrating the Double Ninth Day and eating rice cakes, but the way, the celebration, and the legend behind the festival differ from that of the Han Chinese. For example, the Dong people living in Jinping, Jianhe and Tianzhu of Guizhou Province have the tradition of eating glutinous rice cake on the Double Ninth Day, but legend has it that it is to commemorate the victory of the uprising led by the hero of the Dong ethnic group Jiang Yingfang against the then government; and the glutinous rice cake made by the Tujia ethnic group in west Hunan Province on the festival carries their wish to ward off evil and disaster.