The Lady in the Moon

Chang'e is the Chinese goddess of the moon, whose story is among the most familiar in Chinese folklore. In the best-known version her husband is the archer Yi, who has been rewarded with an elixir of immortality; Chang'e swallows it, to keep it from a thief, or out of longing, the tellings vary, and, growing weightless, floats up to the moon, where she dwells thereafter, in some accounts with only a jade rabbit for company, pounding the elixir of life. Her tale is bound up with the Mid-Autumn Festival, the harvest-moon celebration on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, when families gather to admire the full moon and eat round mooncakes and offerings are made to the moon in her honour, a festival still widely and warmly observed across the Chinese world. The name of China's lunar exploration programme, Chang'e, was chosen in her honour, carrying the ancient moon-goddess into the space age.