In any event, one morning all tens of these fiery, glowing orbs decided to rise all together. Now, some tales have it that there had always been ten suns across the sky, and that they each took their turns in orderly procession to rise one at a time, as was intended yet other telling say that these ten burning bodies appeared at once, mysteriously and without explanation to trouble the lands below. In fact, all across the land, whenever Hou Yi drew near, the people flooded out to greet him and to hold aloft in the own hands targets for him to shoot at with his bow, so confident were they that he would never miss.Īt some point in this idyllic, halcyon age of the newness of Creation, disaster struck. Hou Yi was, without a doubt, the best archer that had even lived, and so was known across Heaven and Earth as the Lord Archer, for his arrows would fly true and strike their intended target no matter what, such was his skill with the bow. Among them was the married couple of Hou Yi and his lady wife Chang’e. Long, long ago, back in the mists of time and when the world was still young, there lived in in the jade halls of Heaven that sat above the Earth many immortals, spirits, and gods. Thus today we present the story of Hou Yi and the Ten Suns, and Chang’e and the Moon: And that’s OK, there is no single version of any of these stories… So the version that I relate today will probably differ from what maybe your grandma told you under the full autumn moon years ago. More than anything, though, today is about having fun with some old stories – so try not to take it too seriously… think of it as the story of Santa Claus and Rudolf, or the Easter Bunny, or Leprechauns… as all legends do, these shift and change with time, place, and even from telling to telling. So today, we’re going to go through the three main legends of the holiday, and hopefully parse through their meanings and importance more fully. And by the Ming and Qing eriods, it had risen to become one of the pre-eminent holidays of the year for just about everyone.Īs with any holiday of note, there are a varieties of traditions, foods, practices… and, of course, stories that seeks to explain the meaning and importance of Mid-Autumn Festival and its traditions. From there, the rise of Mid-Autumn Festival was pretty much assured. It further increased in popularity during the Northern Song period, where it decided moved beyond palace-bound ceremonies and into popular folk-custom, as well as cementing its date on the Chinese calendar as the date of the full moon (the 15th day) of the 8th month of the year. It then received so amount of wider popularity when Tang emperor Xuanzong started holding formal celebrations in his palace. But outside of that ritual observance, few others celebrated the day… until, that is, the early Tang Dynasty in the 7th century. Nevertheless, for a significant period thereafter, it remained something of an obscure ritual – one observed by the imperial family and dedicated to the goddess taiyinxingjun, the deified iteration of Queen Jiang of Shang, who had stood in opposition (ultimately at the cost of her life) to the evil of the fox-spirit Da Ji at the end of the Shang Dynasty, and for which she was ascended to heaven as a deity. You’ve gotta pack on enough calories to make it through the winter, after all!Īs far as traditional Chinese holidays go, Mid-Autumn Festival is a truly ancient one, dating back at least as far as the Shang Dynasty of more than 3,000 years ago, and likely deriving from even further back than that. And – of course – eating… lots and lots of eating… just, so much eating. It also means a time of family gathering, giving thanks for the good fortune of the previous year, and prayers and looking forward to the good things yet to come in the spring to follow. What is the purpose of this holiday? Why, the point of just about any autumnal holiday, of course, harvest-time! From Halloween to Thanksgiving to other such holidays around the world – autumn is the time to get those crops cut and out of the field, and then prepared for the long cold winter to follow. It is a lunar holiday, celebrating the 8th full moon of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, which means that it is variably held between mid-September (as this year) and as late as early October. Happy September 10th, 2022 – a special day this year because it marks one of the major Chinese and East Asian holidays: Mid-Autumn festival, known as Zhongqiu Jie in Chinese, Chuseok in Korea, Tsukimi in Japan, Tet Trung Thu in Vietnam, and by many other names all over the world. I understand the names/words difficulty very much!Įpisode 241 – Special: Mid-Autumn – Fly Me to the Moon I’ll try to get more focused on catching up with that. I keep trying to get the “transcripts” site going, but get distracted…īut I appreciate the want and need.
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