The Ancient Chinese Myth Of Huo Yi And Chang E

Marissa Dimitrion
28 September 2017
ANTH 372
Tok Thompson
China’s Mid-Autumn Festival
The ancient Chinese myth of Huo Yi and Chang E made its way across the vast provinces and changing terrains of China, to a modern era in which it manifests itself as the Mid-Autumn Festival, aka the Moon Festival. The cosmogonic myth of the moon resonated amongst individuals through time, and with China’s early development of distant travel and written language it not only continued but it surpassed Chinese borders into Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month (this year on October 4th) at which the moon is at its fullest and roundest. Although its celebration perpetuated for thousands of years

A common version goes: Once upon a time, there were ten suns in the sky. Conditions were too hot for people and crops to survive. The Emperor of Heaven instructed the skilled archer, Hou Yi to strike down nine of them with his bow and arrow. Hou Yi succeeds and now life is viable with only one sun. Hou Yi was rewarded with an elixir of immortality.While on earth he met and fell in love with Chang E. The two agreed to split the elixir, but the evil Feng Meng overheard and wanted the elixir for himself. While Hou Yi was out hunting, Feng Meng tried to steal the elixir from Chang E, who knowing she couldn’t defeat him alone, drank the entire elixir. Hou Yi found Chang E lifted to the heavens. She vowed to reside forever on the moon to be close to Hou Yi on earth. On that night, when the moon was fullest, Hou Yi, looking up at the moon, put the foods Change E loved in the garden as a sacrifice. The two are recognized today as sun and moon, or yin and yang. However, in various other versions, Chang E drinks the elixir because Hou Yi becomes tyrannical and irresponsible. Other versions mention a rabbit companion or an immortal Queen Mother of the West who supplies the elixir. I intend to explore both how this legend manifests into a ritual holiday today and what function it plays in Chinese

It is argued that the rapid industrialization in China’s big cities leads to high levels of commodification and commercialization of these moon cakes. They no longer represent family unity but are objects of consumerism. Today one can buy jade boxes of gold leaf moon cakes and the focus on the extravagant packaging has allowed for, “more moon cakes to be sent out, while its soul has disappeared” (Liu, 2007). It is also considered that by making the Mid-Autumn Festival an official public holiday it has further diluted its cultural ethos. Now that people have the day off from work they experience pressure to revisit their families and take trips, which overloads streets with traffic and depresses the entire activity (Wang,