Here we go...
My Version of The Legend of The Mid Autumn Festival:Long long time ago,
Emperor Jade had
10 Sons, and they transform into
10 Suns who give light to the earth one by one everyday, but because they were too playful, they wanna play together everyday so they cause the earth to crack, dry up, humans, animals and plants die because of the heat of
10 Suns. So
Emperor Jade ask this famous archer,
Hou Yi to teach them a lesson so that they will be more discipline and follow the rules.
Hou Yi the Archer
So this famous archer
Hou Yi climb up this
Quan Lun Mountain and pull his bow with all his might and shoot down
9 of the Suns, remaining 1 Sun is left for the earth for light and heat. By doing this, the citizens respect and worship him for saving the world, but
Emperor Jade was really angry because
Hou Yi killed
9 of his Sons so he send him to earth and he couldn't be immortal anymore. Eventually he got married with this beautiful lady filled with serenity named
Chang Er.
Chang Er
Chang Er and Hou Yi
Hou Yi live his life with
Chang Er and a lot of people admire them and wants to become his student. He had one student named
Fong Mong, he is a bad hearted man who is jealous of his master
Hou Yi. One day
Hou Yi again climbed up this
Quan Lun Mountain to train and tersepah with the
Queen Mother of West aka
Wong Mou Leung Leung and she gave
Hou Yi this
Anti-Mati Pills, and he can become immortal after eating this pills.
But
Hou Yi mm se tak to leave his beloved wife on earth alone so he gave this pills to his wife
Chang Er to keep.
Chang Er kept this pills in her dressing table's drawer, and at the same time
Hou Yi's student
Fong Mong discover this secret and he greed to have the pills to become immortal so he has this secret plan.
3 days later,
Hou Yi went for training and ask
Fong Mong to go with him, but
Fong Mong berpura-pura sakit perut so
Hou Yi went training alone leaving his beloved wife,
Chang Er behind in her room.
When Hou Yi has left the town,
Fong Mong immediatly took his sword and head to
Chang Er's room. He threaten
Chang Er to give out the pills or else he will kill her.
Chang Er knows that he cant fight
Fong Mong so in force she ate the pills and floated up to "heaven".
Chang Er misses her husband dearly so she flew to the moon to be close to people.
At the evening,
Hou Yi came back from his training and his maid told him what had happen to his wife
Chang Er. He took up his sword and head to hunt for
Fong Mong and killed him. He was so angry and frustrated because his beloved wife had left him and he will never see her again. He shouted "
Chang Er Chang Er, my beloved wife where are you?" and suddenly he realize that he moon is very pleasant towards him and there is a shadow of
Chang Er there.
Hou Yi tried to chase the moon but he failed. He walked 3 steps forward, the moon back off 3 steps, but when he back off 3 steps the moon come forward 3 steps. So no matter what he do, he cant can't go near the moon.
Hou Yi send people to a garden which
Chang Er likes to go to and put flowers, peaches and fresh fruits to show his love to her. The day that
Chang Er left
Hou Yi was 14 August in the Chinese calender. The citizen heard about this story and started worshiping
Chang Er in the moon on this date to get blessing.
This Story is direct translate by my friend through the phone from mandarin to Cantonese and I translate it to English so there are a lot of kecacatan.
The Jade Hare I notice there is a bunny with Chang Er in the moon. There is a story bout how this bunny turn into a Jade Hare, the story is like this:
One day, three immortals who were living in the heaven came to the earth. They asked a fox, a monkey and a rabbit to find some food for them respectively. The fox and the monkey both found something for the three immortals while the rabbit got nothing. The rabbit felt very sorry for the three immortals. Finally, he jumped into the fire and said to the three immortals "eat me, please!" the three immortal were deep moved by the rabbit. They decided to entitle the rabbit a reputation of "
Jade Rabbit" and let him accompany Chang Er in the Moon Palace.
So apparently this bunny pounds medicine, together with the lady, Chang Er, for the gods. Others say that the Jade Rabbit is a shape, assumed by Chang Er herself. You may find that the dark areas to the top of the full moon may be construed as the figure of a rabbit.
But where does Moon Cake comes from???
There is a folk tale about the overthrow of mongol rule facilitated by messages smuggled in moon cakes.
Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries effort to secretly distribute letters in order to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China. The idea is said to be conceived by Zhu YuanZhang, who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and the only way to prevent it was to eat special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. and his advisor Liu Bowen
Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. In order to read the encrypted message, each of the four mooncakes packaged together must be cut into four parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message
Most mooncakes consist of a thin tender skin enveloping a sweet, dense filling. The mooncake may contain one or more whole salted egg yolks in its center to symbolize the full moon.
