Legends of Mid-autumn Festival (I)

The legends of Mid-autumn Festival are very rich, some fairy tales widespread such as Chang'e flying to the moon, Wu Gang cutting laurels and the Jade Rabbit pounding medicine.

Chang'e Flying to the Moon

According to legend, in ancient time there were ten suns in the high sky at the same time, withering the crops in the fields, people living in hardship. Then a hero named Hou Yi was very strong and had an extraordinarily enormous strength with great sympathy for hard-suffering people. So he went aboard the peak of the Kunlun Mountain, exalted his strength, pulled his mighty bow and at a stretch shot nine of the suns, and he strictly ordered the last sun that it should rise and set on time every day to benefit the people all over the earh.

So Hou Yi was so highly respected and admired by the ancient people then that he married a kind and beautiful wife by the name of Chang'e. Hou Yi hung around with his wife all day long in addition to teaching people skills and hunting for food. People admired the talented guy and beautiful lady.

Many ambitious young men and compatriots came to him to learn from him with great admire for his great talents. Among them was a malicious guy named Peng Meng.

One day, Hou Yi went to the Kunlun Mountains to visit some friends and seek Tao, when he encountered the Queen Mother who by accident passed it there. He asked the Queen Mother for a package of everlasting elixir of life, a kind of medicine agaist death. It is said that whoever ate the drug of this kind could right away fly to Heaven and become immortal. However, Hou Yi could not bear leaving his wife behind, and temporarily had to hand the drug to Chang'e for a good hiding. Unfortunately when she was putting the drug into her dresser box, what she did was seen by the malicious guy who wanted to secretly eat it and become immortal by himself.

Three days later, Hou Yi went out hunting along with his believers and apprentices. Peng Meng pretended to fall ill and stayed at home with bad malice. Immediately Hou Yi left, Peng seaked into Hou Yi's backyard holding a sword in his hand, and forced Chang'e to hand the drug over to him. Chang'e knew she was not a strong rival to her enemy. In that critical moment, she, decisive, opened the dresser box and swallowed the drug in a flash. Instantly Chang'e swallowed the drug, her body immediately flew up off the ground, out of the window and up into the sky. As Chang'e worried about her husband, then she flew up to the moon and became immortal there.

In the evening, Hou Yi returned home, and her maids cried him what had happened that day. Hou Yi was so surprised and angry that he pulled out his sword and wanted to kill the bad guy but he had fled earlier before Hou Yi came to him. Hou Yi was very angrily crying, distraught, with great grief and distress inside. He looked up to the vast sky, calling the name of his beloved wife, when he was amazied to find that the moon that night was extraordinarily bright and clear and round and there seemed to be a shaking figure especially like Chang'e's. So he was very desperate to go chasing the moon, but when he went forward three steps, the moon went backward three steps, while when he went backward three steps, the moon went forward three steps. No matter how hard he tried, he failed to get forward closer to the moon.

Having nothing to do with great desperation but also with greater yearning for his beloved wife, he had to order his people to go to Chang'e favorite backyard where the incense table was set up with her favorite honey and fresh fruits on it to offer sacrifice and respect to Chang'e attached to him in the remote moon. As soon as people heard everything about Chang'e immortality, they at once placed their incense tables in the moonlight to pray for good luck and well-being from nice and kind Chang'e.

Since then, the custom widely spread into the folk that people offer sacrifice to the moon on the night of the Mid-autumn Festival.