This year the Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 12th of the Gregorian calendar. Also known as the Chinese Moon Festival, this is the day for people who love the moon to admire it as the moon will be at its fullest.
All holidays have legends to honor though, and this festival is no different. The most popular legend for the Mid-Autumn Festival is traced to the year 2000 B.C. This is the story of Hou Yih, and officer of the imperial guards.
One day ten suns suddenly appeared in sky. The emperor, greatly perturbed and fearful that this occurrence would bring some great evil to his people, ordered Hou Yih, an expert archer, to shoot nine of the suns out of the sky. The great skills with which Hou Yih accomplished the feat greatly impressed the Goddess of the Western Heaven.
Since Hou Yih was also a talented architect, the Goddess commissioned him to build her a palace made of multicolored jade. His work was so pleasing to the Goddess that she rewarded him with the possibility of everlasting life. She gave him the elixir to immortality in the form of a pill. He was not to swallow the pill until he had undergone a year of prayer and fasting. Hou took the pill home and hid it, telling no one his secret.
Hou's wife was a divinely beautiful woman named Chang Oh. One day she discovered the hidden pill and swallowed it. The resulting punishment was immediate and Chang Oh found herself airborne, bound for an eternity of punishment on the moon. As she soared upwards, Hou Yih tried desperately to follow but was thrown back to earth by a typhoon. Chang Oh's divine beauty enhanced the brilliance of the moon with her own glowing radiance. Now, Chinese people gather each Moon Festival to admire her.
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