China's Mid-Autumn Festival and the legends we put in the moon

"The bright moon rises over the sea; at this moment, we share it though we are worlds apart," wrote the Tang poet Zhang Jiuling more than a thousand years ago, in his poem "Gazing at the moon, thinking of the faraway." Longing for someone far away and finding, in the moon overhead, a kind of shared solace is a sentiment that has outlived him by over a millennium, because once a year, entire cultures still turn to this idea.

The 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon is at its fullest and closest to Earth, marks the Mid-Autumn Festival – one of the oldest and most widely celebrated holidays in Chinese culture, tracing back to the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BC) and taking its formal shape centuries later in the Tang (AD 618 to 907), when emperors began holding court ceremonies beneath the full moon. 

By the Northern Song (AD 960 to 1127), the 15th day of the eighth lunar month had become established as the Mid-Autumn Festival.

In our own time, the festival has moved from the historical court into the family home: families gather, lanterns are lit, and mooncakes are cut into wedges and shared. But what makes the Mid-Autumn Festival remarkable is not simply the ritual itself, but the mythology it has accumulated through centuries of legends and stories. Let's look at a few of them.

The story of Chang'e

The oldest and most central story begins not with the moon but the sun, or rather, with too many of them.

The story goes that in ancient times, ten suns, who were brothers, took turns crossing the sky. One day, all ten decided to appear at the same time.

The intense heat dried up rivers, burned crops and made life on Earth almost impossible. Armed with a mighty bow and arrows, a hero named Hou Yi climbed a high mountain and tried to warn the suns. When they refused to listen, he drew his bow and shot down nine of them, leaving only one, so the world could survive. 

The Queen Mother of the West, moved by his courage, gave him an elixir of immortality as a reward. The elixir was meant for one person only, but Hou Yi could not bear the idea of becoming immortal without his wife, Chang'e. He gave her the elixir to keep.

Then came Pang Meng, a student of Hou Yi's who had heard about the elixir, who broke into their home while Hou Yi was hunting and demanded Chang'e hand it over. Unable to overpower him and unwilling to let him have it, she made the only choice she had, drinking it herself.

The magic made her float up. Wanting to stay close to her husband, she flew to the nearest thing in the sky to the Earth she was leaving. The legend says she has lived on the moon, in the Guanghan Palace, alone ever since. Hou Yi, inconsolable, set out food and fruit she had loved every full moon, offerings to a wife he could see but not reach. People followed his example, marking the beginning roots of the festival.

The story of the Jade Rabbit

This story tells of the ultimate sacrifice. Three immortals, disguised as poor old men, came down to Earth and begged for food from a fox, a monkey, and a rabbit. The fox brought what it could. The monkey brought fruit. The rabbit had nothing to offer, no stores to share, so it offered itself and jumped into the fire.

The immortals, moved beyond words, carried the rabbit to the moon, where it lives now as the Jade Rabbit, or Yu Tu, grinding herbs in a mortar, preparing the elixir of immortality for the gods and for Chang'e. Its sacrifice was so complete that it was rewarded with the closest thing to heaven the Chinese imagination could offer.

The Moon rabbit legend is popular and part of local folklore throughout Asia. It may be found in diverse cultures in China, India, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

This legend also gave rise to Tet Trung Thu of Vietnam, Tsukimi of Japan, Chuseok of Korea, and Bon Om Touk in Cambodia, all of which celebrate the legend of the moon rabbit. 

The story behind the mooncakes

The story behind the mooncakes is part history, part legend. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty (AD 1271–1368), as rebellions against Mongol rule spread across China, the story goes that Zhu Yuanzhang's adviser Liu Bowen devised a way to send secret instructions inside mooncakes being exchanged for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Hidden inside the cakes was a simple message: rise up on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.

The mooncakes, indistinguishable from ordinary festival gifts, supposedly carried the message from one community to another, helping rebels coordinate their uprising. The Yuan eventually fell, and Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368. Whether mooncakes actually helped bring about that victory is another matter: the story does not appear in contemporary historical records and is now regarded by historians as a folk legend that grew around the memory of the rebellion.

What the festival is actually about

The Mid-Autumn Festival is, in almost every telling, a celebration of reunion. The round mooncake represents wholeness and completeness, while the full moon on the 15th night is traditionally seen as the year's most perfect moon. To gaze at it is to think of those who are not beside us, and to remember that, however far apart we may be, we are still looking at the same moon.

Editor's note: Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This article is part of China, Soft Focus – a slow journalism series that offers textured, human-centered glimpses into China through measured pace and intimate storytelling.