A Myth

Today is traditional Chinese holiday-Mid-autumn Festival, which is one of the four major holidays in China or in some other Asia-Pacific countries. They are Chinese New Year, Ching Ming, the Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-autumn festival. The ancient kings in China used to have the custom of offering sacrifice to the sun in spring, and offered sacrifice to the moon in autumn. Like some of the most important holidays in the United States, people have a yearly reunion in China nowadays. I still want to talk about the festival and its related custom even though I don`t have a chance to stay with my family this year.

There is a beautiful myth about the Mid-autumn Festival. In ancient times, there was a year, ten suns showed up in the sky all of a sudden. The ridiculous high temperature cracked the land and dried out the sea so bad. People could barely live on the land any more. Houyi, who was a super hero climbed up the Kunlun Mountain after he knew this. He shot down nine suns with his bow, and the life there turned out to be peaceful again.

The citizens respected and supported their hero so much, a bunch of people with lofty ideals tried to learn some supernatural skills from Houyi. A treacherous guy was also in that group of people, whose name was Pengmeng. Houyi married a beautiful girl before long, and nobody knew she was the goddess of moon. One day, Houyi got an herbal from a god when he was on his way to hunting, which was able to make him live forever on the planet once he took the herbal. He didn`t want to let anybody else know this secret, so he gave the herbal to his wife and hid it in their bedroom. Unfortunately, Pengmeng saw everything there.

Pengmeng took advantage of Houyi left for hunting one day, he broke into Houyi`s house with his sword, and force his wife to hand over the herbal. She had no idea how to fight against a man like Pengmeng, so she decided to swallow the herbal immediately. Unexpectedly, her body floated in the air right away, and flew out of the window towards to the moon, which is the closest planet to the earth since she was still missing her husband. In that evening, Houyi knew everything when he got home. He cried his wife`s name at the moon, and he found the moon was extremely bright that night. Houyi put his wife`s favorite fruit and moon cake on a table in his yard every single night with the purpose of offering the sacrifice to his goddess of moon in the remote moon palace.


Mid-autumn Festival is one of the few holidays can gather family members have dinner together. People would like to have moon cake and tea in the open air after dinner at night. Having moon cake is the symbol of reunion. The most important activity is no more than enjoy the glorious full moon on that day with the entire family members, just like Houyi did in those days. As a matter of fact, the moon seems brighter than any other day in the whole year.