The craft of making Fuding cake flowers is a traditional handicraft of the Han nationality in Fuding City, Fujian Province. Cake flowers are a unique type of painting with local characteristics created by local Han folk artists in Fuding more than 200 years ago. It is a decorative painting specially pasted on Mid-Autumn mooncakes. "Cake flowers" are a unique type of painting with local characteristics created by local Han folk artists in Fuding more than 200 years ago. It is a decorative painting specially pasted on Mid-Autumn mooncakes. The content of the performance is mainly based on opera themes, and the forms are novel, including beauty style, eight sceneries style, eight fruits style, group style, etc. The pictures are bright and lively, with red, yellow, green, pink and other colors as the main colors, clear lines, strong Han culture and local characteristics, and very popular among the people. They are popular in Xiapu, Fu'an, Zherong counties and cities in eastern Fujian and Pingyang and Cangnan areas in Zhejiang. People from all over the country are accustomed to sticking pictures of cake flowers on the walls of their own halls or rooms for decoration and appreciation after children arrange cakes to enjoy the moon, and eat Mid-Autumn Festival cakes. It has become a unique festival custom in Fuding City and places where cake flowers are popular. For Fuding people in their eighties and nineties, moon cakes with cake flowers are authentic enough; for Fuding people in their fifties and sixties, cake flowers are a fine work of art worth collecting; for Fuding people in their thirties and forties, cake flowers are a vague memory of childhood; for Fuding people around twenty years old, most of them don't know what cake flowers are. The development of cake flowers in the history of craftsmanship has roughly gone through three stages: paper cutting, hand painting and wood carving. In the late wood carving stage, the form of cake flowers gradually became standardized and formal. There is no written record of the history of cake flowers. Artists of all generations have passed down that since the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, there have been representative works in the form of paper-cutting, such as Hundred-child flowers. Later, there were hand-painted group cake flowers. In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, a group of Han folk artists appeared, and at the same time created unique cake flowers such as beauty style, eight-fruit style, and eight-scene style, which are rare in the country. In the Republic of China, a puppet show artist Lin Tongling carved hand-painted cake flowers on woodblocks, and woodcut cake flowers began from then on. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Shanghai's overseas version of drama pictures impacted the Fuding cake flower market. This kind of drama pictures was popular on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. After the Cultural Revolution, the Mid-Autumn Festival cake flowers appeared in simple and high-end decorations. The original cake flowers disappeared. In addition to giving children, mooncakes also became social gifts. Fuding was established as a county in the fourth year of Qianlong. Due to the increase in population and economic prosperity after the establishment of the county, it also brought cultural prosperity. The number of temples in the county increased, and various temple fairs and folk customs activities also became richer. There were Hundred-child flowers during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. The Hundred-child flower is cut out of red, white and green paper. The hands and face of the characters are cut out of white paper, the clothes are cut out of red paper, and the pants are cut out of green paper (or the clothes are cut out of green paper and the pants are cut out of red paper). The facial features are painted with ink, and then collage is made. The characters are mainly children, so it is called "Hundred-child flower". Because the picture of "Hundred-child flower" is small, only the size of a fist, it is called "fist flower". Only one character is pasted on each mooncake. In the late Qing Dynasty, some painting mooncake artists could write, paint, and tie colorfully, and hand-painted round mooncake flowers came into being. The name "round mooncake flower" comes from the round mooncake flowers painted by the artists on paper. Its format is round, and the size is four inches and six inches in diameter. The four-inch diameter has one to two characters, and the six-inch diameter has two to three characters. The content is mainly opera, and the characters are surrounded by colorful clouds to set off. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, with the development of painting techniques and forms, and the emergence of Han folk artists, the "mud gold cake flower" was developed and created on the basis of the "round flower", which pushed the development of Fuding hand-painted cake flowers to a climax. Craft characteristics "mud gold cake flower" is meticulous and colorful, with gold, the picture is magnificent and delicate, with powder copying face (divided into light and dark painting methods, commonly known as copying face by Han folk artists), colorful painting clothes, gold hook robe armor, blue and green filling (base color), pastel dots flowers and fruits, bright colors, adding a lot of sound and color compared to round cake flowers. Moreover, there are also many forms, including "beauty style", "eight fruit style", "eight treasures style", "child style" and so on, which greatly increased the variety of cake flowers. Cake flowers also calibrate the weight of moon cakes according to the number of figures, such as one figure is set as four taels of cake, two figures are half a catty of cake, three figures are twelve taels of cake, four figures are one catty of cake, and up to sixteen figures are four catties of cake (in the past, one catty was calculated as sixteen taels), and its labor cost is often several times higher than the moon cake itself. At that time, the price was one to five silver dollars, and wealthy families even made contracts with artists. The most popular period of "mud gold cake flower" was about the 10th to 25th year of the Republic of China, and later it was replaced by woodcut cake flower. According to legend, in the early years of the Republic of China, there was a puppet show artist named Lin Tongling in Fuding. Seeing that cake flowers were selling well, Fuding's neighboring counties such as Xiapu, Zherong, Taishun, and Pingyang came to Fuding to order cake flowers. He collected some cake flower drafts, carved them on wooden boards, printed them with ink, and filled in colors based on the ink lines. This kind of woodcut cake flower does not print the facial features of the characters. After printing, powder is used to open the face and draw the facial features. Han folk artists call this kind of cake flower "face-washing cake flower". Soon, Chen Houzan of Wenchengtang Bookstore in Fuding Chengguan and Pan Ji of Nanyang near Chengguan also carved wooden boards to print cake flowers. The printing of these two companies was relatively complete, and the colors were basically finalized. They mainly used water materials, such as magenta, cyan, purple, and yellow, and mobilized the women in their families to color. Later, Wenzhou Ye Xinda Stone Printing Bureau and Fuding Pan Zongluan Stone Printing Bureau further traced the cake flower draft on the stone seal to print cake flowers. Later, Fuding Xuncheng Zhu Yuansheng and Zhu Yinggui imitated the effect of watermark woodcut and carved color watermark woodcut cake flowers. The sky color was also divided into light and dark. Fuding Chengguan Wencheng Hall also carved color cake flowers. Wencheng Hall Chen Jiren and Lin Bi were influenced by the emerging woodcut and absorbed the new woodcut lines to carve cake flowers. These were all further developments in Fuding cake flower creation.