ABOUT

Chang Er, The Moon Goddess.

Chang Er was a beautiful young girl working in the Jade Emperor's palace in heaven, where immortals, good people and fairies lived. She married Hou Yi, an expert archer and huntsman.

In a very distant village, there was a large tree overlooking the Eastern Ocean, the tree was so large and tall that its branches reached the sky.
On this tree lived 10 crows which had the onerous task of raising the Sun into the sky. Each raven had its own Sun and every day, in turn, a different raven with a different Sun rose in flight.

One day, a strange phenomenon occurred -- 10 suns arose in the sky instead of one, blazing the earth. Faced with this chaos, the Emperor asked for help from the god Dijun, God of Eastern Paradise, who decided to send the best celestial archer, Hou Yi, to his aid.

Hou Yi took his red bow with his white arrows and his wife Chang Er, and went down to the village.

Hou Yi initially tried to make the 10 crows reason, but they did not want to hear reasons and all 10 remained in heaven. At that point in Hou Yi annoyed by the arrogance of the crows he decided to shoot them with his arrows.

He took the first arrow and flung it at the first crow, which fell to the ground with his own Sun. Then he took a second arrow and hit the second crow, then the third and so on, up to the ninth crow. Hou Yi left only one crow alive with his own Sun, necessary to give heat and energy to the Earth.

The god Dijun, when he learned that Hou Yi had killed 9 of his 10 children, got so angry that Hou Yi and his wife Chang Er were forever chased from their heavenly abode and he made them remain forever on Earth by taking away the gift of immortality.

Hou Yi liked life on Earth, taught the art of archery and was a hero of various challenges, but only one thing was missing, his immortality. With the passage of time he began to feel guilty for having forced his beautiful wife Chang Er to give up her immortality forcing her to an earthly life full of hardships.

Hou Yi had to find a way to return to heaven and to regain their immortality.

One day, he learned that a certain lady, the Queen Mother of the West, possessed an elixir of immortality. Then Hou Yi crossed seas and mountains until he reached the presence of the Queen Mother of the West, who knew the fame of the archer and his heroic exploits, and so she immediately gave him the last bottle of the elixir.

Hou Yi now had a great question before him: “What to do? I can’t drink the elixir and go up to heaven alone and leave Chang Er here, but I also can’t go up to heaven alone. What should I do?”

Tormented by a thousand questions, Hou Yi, once back home decided to hide the elixir.

Days later, Chang Er discovered her husband’s secret and, despite the love for her beloved, she was fed up with that life so, one night, Chang Er secretly drank the elixir.

Immediately after drinking it, Chang Er began to feel her body to be lighter and lighter and she started to float up into the sky. Chang Er was frightened and started to cry and called her beloved, but when Hou Yi arrived, she had already climbed into the sky floating towards the big bright Moon.

Hou Yi tried to shoot her down with arrows, but without success. 

Since that famous night, Chang Er has lived a lonely life on the Moon in her large Guanhangong palace with only one friend: “the Jade rabbit” who had been saved from the flames by her.

The story of the jade rabbit goes like this: one day the rabbit together with other animals, driven by the desire to do good, decided to get food for an old traveller. 

The rabbit was the only one who could not find food, so he proposed himself as a dish and launched himself into the flames. But Chang Er, struck by the courage and noble heart of the little rabbit, saved him and took him with her to the moon.

It is said that when the Moon is full, if you look at it well, you can see the image of Chang Er and the jade rabbit.

Her jade rabbit companion, is constantly pounding the elixir of immortality in a large mortar.

The moon is also inhabited by a woodcutter who tries to cut down the cassia tree, giver of life. But as fast as he cuts into the tree, it heals itself, and he never makes any progress. The Chinese use this image of the cassia tree to explain mortal life on earth -- the limbs are constantly being cut away by death, but new buds continually appear.

Meanwhile, Hou Yi ascended to the sun and built a palace. So Chang Er and Hou Yi came to represent the Yin and Yang, the Moon and the Sun.