How Cháng’é Flew to the Moon
(Cháng’é Bēn Yuè 嫦娥奔月)

Hòuyì 后羿 was the great archer who shot down nine suns from the sky and saved early humanity from burning up. This is recounted in a different tale. Hòuyì was married to a beautiful maiden named Cháng’é 嫦娥, who however became, over time, a bit of a nag.

Some say that Hòuyì and Cháng’é were banned from Heaven because the nine suns that Hòuyì had shot down were sons of the Celestial Emperor (Tiāndì 天帝), and that Cháng’é, unable to tolerate life as a mere mortal, had sent him to appeal to the Queen Mother of the West (Xīwángmǔ 西王母) for two pills of immortality so that they could at least become immortals, if not gods again. (The Great Western Mother was heaven’s principal dealer in such drugs.)

Other legends are less clear about just how or why Hòuyì came to have pills of immortality. But all agree that Hòuyì brought home a pill of immortality one day, which he had received from the Queen Mother of the West. He was not to consume it immediately, for he had been warned that it would require a year of prayer and fasting before it could be properly assimilated, so he took it home and hid it. Cháng’é found it, and ate it, some say in a fit of pique, some say out of ignorance, some say corrupted by the temptation of immortality. Becoming an instant immortal she knew she would be in Big Trouble when Hòuyì came back from the hunt.

So she fled to the moon, where she dwells to this day, reigning as a moon goddess from the Palace of Yellow Cold (Huánghán Gōng 黄寒宫).

Others say that there were two pills, one for Hòuyì and one for Cháng’é, which they intended to take simultaneously, but that Hòuyì was called away, and while he was gone Cháng’é decided to earth both pills, for if one would make her immortal, she reasoned that two would perhaps make her a goddess once again. Somewhat contrary to her expectations, she began to float off into space just as Hòuyì returned. Hòuyì’s first instinct was to shoot her down, but he was unwilling to hurt her, and instead returned home broken hearted. Meanwhile, unable to face the criticism she would no doubt receive in Heaven, Cháng’é dared not go there, so she headed instead to the moon, which was populated only by a rabbit —the same one we can see when we look at the moon today— and by a toad and a bay tree. And there she dwells even now.

In some versions she was banished to the moon as a punishment, while Hòuyì tried desperately to get her back. In other versions, once arriving on the moon, she instantly burped up the pill, which was transformed into the rabbit one sees on the surface of the moon today, while Cháng’é herself became the three-legged toad that is also associated with the moon.

In our own day China has named some of its missions to the moon and lunar landers Cháng’é after this remarkable lady.