Chang'e, the Chinese Moon goddess: elixir, jade rabbit and festival
The myth of Chang'e and the archer Yi in Chinese sources, the elixir of the Queen Mother of the West, the jade rabbit and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
On mid-autumn nights, when the full Moon looks larger and brighter, people in China have for centuries told the story of a woman who lives up there, alone, in a cold palace. She is Chang'e, the goddess of the Moon. Her myth, handed down in many versions, combines an ancient reflection on immortality with a festive tradition that still involves millions of families across East Asia today.
The archer and the ten suns
According to legend, in a remote age ten suns rose together in the sky, scorching the earth and withering the crops. The archer Yi, often called Hou Yi, shot down nine of them with his arrows, leaving only one. To reward him, or in other versions at his own request, the Queen Mother of the West, Xiwangmu, gave him an elixir of immortality.
The Huainanzi, a collection of philosophical texts compiled at the court of Prince Liu An in the second century BC, reports in a few words that Yi's wife stole the elixir and fled to the Moon. Her name was originally Heng'e. It was changed to Chang'e during the Han dynasty to avoid the character heng, which formed part of the personal name of Emperor Wen, in keeping with the custom that forbade writing the ruler's name.
The toad, the rabbit and the woodcutter
Some ancient sources tell that Chang'e, once on the Moon, was turned into a toad, and for this reason the animal long remained a lunar symbol. The silk banner from the tomb of the Marquise of Dai at Mawangdui, from the second century BC, shows the crescent moon with a toad and a small rabbit. In the later and more widespread versions, by contrast, the goddess keeps her human form and lives in the Palace of Great Cold.
Beside her lives the jade rabbit, who pounds the herbs of immortality in a mortar. A legend attested in the Tang period adds the figure of Wu Gang, condemned to fell an osmanthus tree that grows back after every blow. All these images arose from observing the markings on the Moon, which in China were read as a rabbit, while in Europe people saw a face or a man carrying a bundle of sticks.
The Mid-Autumn Festival
The myth of Chang'e is linked above all to the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhongqiu, celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, when the Moon is full. Families gather to gaze at the Moon, light lanterns and share mooncakes, yuebing, round like the lunar disc. The dominant theme is reunion, the opposite of the goddess's solitude.
The figure of Chang'e has also reached the space age. The Chinese lunar exploration programme bears her name: the Chang'e 1 probe was launched in 2007, and in 2013 the rover of the Chang'e 3 mission was named Yutu, jade rabbit. In 2019 the Chang'e 4 probe made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon. An ancient myth has thus given its names to one of the most recent scientific undertakings.