Chang'e

Chang'e (/ˈtʃɒŋ.ə/ CHONG-ə; Chinese: 嫦娥; pinyin: Cháng'é), originally known as Heng'e, is the goddess of the Moon and wife of Yi, the great archer. Renowned by her beauty, Chang'e is also known for her ascending to the moon with her Yu Tu, the Moon Rabbit and living in the Moon Palace (广寒宫). She is one of the major goddesses in ancient Chinese mythology. In modern times, Chang'e is the namesake of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.
Origins and Descriptions
Chang'e first appeared in Guicang, a divination text written in Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC - 256 BC). From the few preserved fragments of the text, it mentions "Yi shoots the ten Suns," and "Chang'e ascending to the moon." Chang'e—originally named Heng'e (姮娥)—was renamed to avoid the taboo on sharing names with a deceased emperor, in this case, Liu Heng, an emperor from Han Dynasty. Many Chinese poems are written around the theme of Chang'e and the moon.
In pre-Qin Dynasty (pre 221 BC), the text, Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海经), mentions "a woman is bathing the moon; she is Chang Xi, the wife of Emperor Jun. She has given birth to twelve moons, and only then does she begin to bathe the moon. (有女子方浴月，帝俊妻常羲生月十二，此始浴之。)" The name "Chang Xi" in this text refers to "Chang'e" since the pronunciation of "e (娥)" is identical to "xi (羲)" in ancient Chinese.
Late Tang Dynasty (618-907), famous poet, Li Shangyin, wrote the poem "Chang'e" based on the story of Chang'e stealing the immortal elixir. Like this goddess, the poet discovers a connection in the solitude of moonlight, sensing their shared loneliness while gazing at the night sky. Among the hundreds of poems around Chang'e and the moon, she gradually evolved into a symbol of nostalgia and solitude for numerous poets beyond Li.
The original poem in Simplified Chinese:
嫦娥
雲母屏風燭影深，長河漸落曉星沉。
嫦娥應悔偷靈藥，碧海青天夜夜心。
The translation by Witter Bynner, in his book The Jade Mountain:
To the Moon Goddess
Now that a candle-shadow stands on the screen of carven marble
And the River of Heaven slants and the morning stars are low,
Are you sorry for having stolen the potion that has set you
Over purple seas and blue skies, to brood through the long nights?
During the Ming and Qing dynasties (Ming: 1368–1644, Qing: 1644–1911), with the flourishing of urban literature, the image of Chang'e gradually became more secularized. In the novel Journey to the West (西游记, 1592), Chang'e is a title that refers to the celestial maidens in the Moon Palace, and it is the Weathervane Marshal who teases the Niche Dress Fairy, not Chang'e. In Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋志異, 1766), while Chang'e remains a celestial being from heaven, her character undergoes a transformation as she descends to the mortal realm, shedding her divinity.
Myth
Tales
There are many tales about Chang'e, including a well-known story about her that is given as the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
In one version, in a very distant past, Chang'e was a beautiful woman. Ten suns had risen together into the skies and scorched the Earth, thus causing hardship for the people. Hou Yi, a legendary archer and the husband of Chang'e, shot down nine of them, leaving just one Sun, and was rewarded with two portions of the elixir of immortality. As he did not want to gain immortality without his beloved wife, Hou Yi waited to consume the elixir and left it with his wife, Chang'e. However, while Hou Yi went out hunting, his apprentice Fengmeng broke into his house and tried to force Chang'e to give him the elixir, so Chang'e took both portions herself rather than giving them up to Fengmeng. Then, Chang'e flew upward past the heavens, choosing the Moon to be her immortal residence as she loved her husband and wished to live near him. When Hou Yi discovered what transpired, he felt responsible for Chang'e, so he displayed the fruits and cakes that his wife had enjoyed, then killed himself.
In older versions of the story, Chang'e stole the elixir from Hou Yi, drank it, and flew to the Moon so that her husband could not go after her.
In other depictions
Chang'e also appears in Wu Cheng'en's late 16th-century novel, the Journey to the West; here, she is said to live in the Guǎng Hán Gōng (廣寒宮, lit. the "Vast-Cold Palace"), located upon the Moon. During a heavenly festival of immortal peaches (after Sun Wukong's banishment), the heavenly official (a Canopy Marshal named Heavenly Tumbleweed) who would become Zhu Bajie, became heavily drunk, saw the goddess, Chang'e, and attempted to force himself on her, only to be prevented and reported for this act, resulting in him being reincarnated as a boar/man beast-monster, who would later be recruited by the Bodhisattva, Guanyin, as a guardian for Tang Sanzang as he went on his pilgrimage to India for the Tripitaka, the three baskets of scriptures written by Tathāgata Buddha. Later into the story, the goddess, Chang'e's, pet, the Jade Rabbit, became an antagonist and had to be retrieved by Chang'e or-else Sun Wukong would have killed the rabbit.
Space travel
Chang'e was mentioned in a conversation between Houston CAPCOM and the Apollo 11 crew just before the first Moon landing in 1969: The International Astronomical Union has assigned the name Chang-Ngo to a small impact crater on the Moon. In 2007, China launched its first lunar probe, a robotic spacecraft named Chang'e 1 in the Goddess' honor. A second robotic probe, named Chang'e 2, was launched in 2010. A third Chang'e spacecraft, called Chang'e 3, landed on the Moon on December 14, 2013, making China the third country to achieve such a feat after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The lander also delivered the robotic rover Yutu ("Jade Rabbit") to the lunar surface. On January 3, 2019, Chang'e 4 touched down on the far side of the Moon and deployed the Yutu-2 rover.
In popular culture
The original plotline and inspiration of Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon is inspired by the legend of Chang'e (and Nayotake-no-Kaguya-hime from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and the myth of Selene and her mortal-turned-immortal lover, Endymion from Classical Greco-Roman Mythology). The titular character is a princess of the Moon while her love interest is from Earth; her reincarnation's civilian identity's name is "Usagi Tsukino" (a pun on the "Rabbit on the Moon").
In 2013, Chang'e was released as a playable character in the MOBA Smite.
In 2018, Chang'e was also released as a playable character in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
In the video game series Touhou Project, Chang'e is the mysterious sworn enemy of Junko, the final boss of the 15th game Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
Chang'e and her story is the main theme of the 2020 American-Chinese animated feature film Over the Moon produced by Netflix. The goddess is voiced by Phillipa Soo.
Chang'e and her story was reimagined in the 2022 fantasy novel Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan.
Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard included the track "Chang'e," containing elements of her story, on their 2023 album The Silver Cord
Gallery
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Allan, Tony, Charles Phillips, and John Chinnery, Land of the Dragon: Chinese Myth, Duncan Baird Publishers, London, 2005 (through Barnes & Noble Books),
Laing, Ellen Johnston, "From Thief to Deity: The Pictorial Record of the Chinese Moon Goddess, Chang E" in Kuhn, Dieter & Stahl, Helga, The Presence of Antiquity: Form and Function of References to Antiquity in the Cultural Centers of Europe and East Asia. Wuerzburg, 2001, pp. 437–54.
External links
Mid-Autumn Festival
Chinese goddesses
Lunar goddesses
Deities in Taoism