Surrounded by anime memorabilia, Labubus in crochet wares and manga wallpaper, I found myself baking mooncakes on a Tuesday evening in Tommy Ly’s GeekEasy Anime Café .

Kneading dough, measuring our chosen fillings, assembling the mooncake and pressing it into an ornate 3D-printed mold, Ly walked students through each step of the process while offering a history lesson on the mooncake origin story.

Tommy Ly demonstrates how to add filling into the mooncake dough during GeekEasy Anime Cafe's Make Me a Mooncake workshop in Old Town, Portland on Sept. 23, 2025. Abigail Landwehr/The Oregonian

Mooncakes first originated in China as harvest offerings. In one legend, Ly explained, the mooncakes were used to transmit secret messages in the successful Han Chinese uprising against the Mongol-le

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