The moon festival is loaded with different stories and legends, from the anti-Yuan dynasty rebellion, to the unchoppable tree on the moon. But the most famous one is the story of the archer and his wife. There are as many different versions of this story as there are styles of Chinese cooking. Some versions paint the archer as a tyrannical ruler. Some paints his wife as a conniving self-serving fool. Some versions do both. I will like to share with you my own interpretation of a different and lesser known version of this famous tale. This version is a story about love, devotion, and deep beautiful longing.

The Archer and his wife

The time was around 2170 B.C. Legend has it that there were ten suns in the heavens that gave the earth its warmth and its glow. They took turns shining, so one would rise per day, while the other nine rested and played. One day, all ten suns decided to play a little joke by rising all at once, and not going down. The heat was so intense that it scrotched everything crispy and dry. There was great suffering across the land. In a desperate measure to save his kingdom, the emperor dared to challenge the heavens and summoned the mightiest archers to shoot down all but one sun. Archer after archer answered the emperor's call, but to no avail. Finally, Hou-Yi, a soldier in the emperor's army, took the challenge.

Hou-Yi had already built quite a reputation for himself due to his immense size, remarkable strength, expertise in the martial arts, and his ability to shoot down demons great and small. He stepped forward and picked up his personal bow, with a size so big and weight so heavy that no other man can lift. He then pulled back on the string, with a tension so high, that no other man can pull, and unleashed the first arrow to the sky. They all watched with great fear, anticipation and anxiety as the arrow faded into the intense light. How can a mortal even imagine the idea of shooting down a sun?

When the first sun fell, no one spoke a word...

When the second sun fell, no one moved a muscle…

When the third sun fell, no one dared a breath…

Then the fourth one fell…

Then the fifth…

Each one seemingly going down quicker then the last…

Finally, as the ninth sun fell, and the reality of events took hold, the kingdom exploded with relief and celebrated with great joy.

Hou-Yi has saved the day.

As a reward for his great deed, Hou-Yi was granted the pills to immortality. He was told that in order to reap its full benefits, he had to fast for a year before slowly and carefully consuming the pills over a period of time. If he continued practicing his kung fu after he took the pill, he may even extend beyond the realm of the immortals, to the majesty of the gods. Being a wise man, Hou-Yi heeded the advice and started to purify his soul in preparation for the precious pills. During this time of fasting, he was summoned by the emperor for another mission, so he gave the pills to his wife Chang-Er for safe keeping during his absence.

...

Everything was going well for Chang-Er at home, except for one thing. She sensed an odd engergy coming from one particular servant. It turned out that her instincts were correct. The servant was jealous of Hou-Yi's fame and success, and had decided to steal his immortality pills. Chang-Er caught him trying to steal the pills from her hiding place. In the struggles that ensued, she accidentally swallowed half the pills all at once.

Overwhelmed by its power and unable to control it, she found herself drifting up into the air! She continued to float all the way up toward heavens, and did not stop ascending until she reached the moon. Once there, as hard as she tried, she just could not get herself to float back down to earth. She was trapped! Destroyed by the thought that she would never be able to return to her love, she sought the help of the Jade Rabbit (a kind soul that lives on the moon), to pound and mortar the remaining pills into a form that could help her return to the earth. Legend has it that the rabbit is still pounding away…

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When Hou-Yi returned and realized what had happened, he was crushed. His pain was not from losing his chance for immortality, but at the idea that he will never see Chang-Er again. So every year, on the fifteenth day of the eight month, when the moon is at its biggest and its brightest, Hou-Yi would look up yearningly at the moon and hope to catch a glimpse of his lost wife. Sensing his love, Chang-Er would do the same by staring down hopefully from the moon. It has been said that their yearning is so strong, and their devotion is so true, that their engergy transformed the moon to always appear more beautiful and more melancholy then usual during this time of year.

...

Touched by the tragic story of their hero, and beauty of the moon that testifies to the love between him and his wife, the people of the kingdom started to celebrate the fall harvest festival with a celebration of the moon. And through that, the Moon Festival was born. It makes great sense, since the harvest time is already a festival of appreciation for the abundance of mother earth; it is now also a festival of appreciation for the people in one's life. To this day, the moon festival is an extremely important day of festivities and family reunions to the Chinese people. Whole big extended families would get together to eat moon cakes, drink tea, eat pomelos and celebrate the moon and togetherness.

The moon, moon cakes, and pomelos are all noted for being very "round." The word for round in Chinese is, "huan." The word "huan" has association with togetherness and reunion in the Chinese language. The specific phrase we use for reunions is "twan-huan" which literally means, "gathering round."

I hope you have enjoyed this version of the legend of The Archer and his wife. Through out my life, I have often found myself longing for loved ones that were in places that seemed as far away as the moon. While most of our loved ones won't fly off forever onto the moon, the time we do spend with them is never any less precious. So go home tonight, and make sweet love to your woman (or man) like your Hou-Yi visiting Chang-Er on the moon. Call your pops, hang with your boys, eat something tasty, eat something round, drink tea, tell jokes, give a big shout out to all your peeps, and last but not least, give mad love to the moon.

 - YuTai Albert Liao