By: Cleo Newton

The Mid Autumn Moon Festival is a Chinese festival that celebrates the unity and harmony among loved ones. There’s a well known legend/folktale that goes with this holiday: 嫦娥奔月 (Chang’e Ben yue). The story (according to my memory of hearing it every year) goes like this:

There once were ten suns in the sky, the suns would go around burning up the earth and causing droughts. People were dying because they couldn’t drink any water or grow any crops to eat. To solve this problem, Houyi, being a very experienced archer, was given a special set of bow and arrows to shoot down the suns. He shot down the suns one by one until there was only one left remaining. The last sun was left in the sky to keep the earth from going cold.

As a reward for shooting down the suns, a goddess came down and gave him an elixir (in some other versions it’s a few pills). Drinking (or eating) half this (these) elixir (pills), would make you live forever, eating all of them would allow you to ascend to heaven and become a deity. Houyi gave the medicine to his wife, Chang’e and told her about the effects of drinking (eating). Overjoyed, Chang’e and Houyi agreed that they would both drink (eat) half (I’m not sure why they didn’t just do that right away).

Chang’e was left to guard the medicine while Houyi left to hunt for food (I thought all the animals were still burned up and dead from just the other day 🤔). PengMeng (who in some versions of the story is a student of Houyi, and in others he’s just some guy), had heard Chang’e and Houyi talking about the pills, and decided that he wanted to steal the elixir (pills) for himself. He broke into their house while Houyi was out and threatened Chang’e with a knife, saying that he would kill her if she didn’t give him the elixir (pills). In some other versions of the story, there is no PengMeng and Chang’e was a greedy person who took the medicine for herself. To keep the medicine safe, Chang’e drank (swallowed) the elixir (pills) and flew up to the moon.

Houyi saw his wife flying off and chased after her to no avail. Once Chang’e arrived on the moon, she threw up the medicine and it turned into a rabbit. The rabbit supposedly can be seen on the face of the moon trying to make a new kind of medicine so Chang’e can come back to earth.

Houyi would frequently leave out fruit and mooncakes for his wife (in case she came back) and that’s why every year during the Mid Autumn Moon Festival, people sit outside to look at the full moon, and eat Mooncakes and fruit (Chang’e’s favorite foods).

After reading this I hope you’ve learned a bit about the Mid Autumn Moon Festival.