In both China and Vietnam, the Mid-Autumn Festival focuses on time together as a family and with friends. However, the legends and myths surrounding the full, harvest moon tend to change by country and region. At the library, staff who celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival have shared their traditions with our library community.
The famous legend of Cuội, the man on the moon, is well known throughout Vietnam. As library staff member Trang Oliver tells it, Chú Cuội, a kind woodcutter, discovers a magical banyan tree that can revive the dead.
“He tests it on various animals and accidentally brings a tiger back to life. The man brings the tree home to plant it in his yard. On the way home he’s told he should only use clean water to water it, never dirty water. Cuội loves the tree more than anything — even his wife and family. So his wife thinks maybe without the tree you will pay more attention to me, and pours dirty water on the tree. When she does this, the tree's roots shake out of the ground and the man grabs the tree and he flies up into the sky. That’s how he ended up on the moon.”
So every Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon is full, children light the path with lanterns. This is so the man can find his way back to earth.
In China, Chang’e (嫦娥) is known as the Chinese goddess of the moon, and the story of how she got there is very different from the Vietnamese Chú Cuội.
Chang’e (嫦娥) was the wife of a brave man. Every day the man would go out and see 10 suns in the sky, and would shoot down nine of the suns, so there was only one. The gods in the heavens were so happy with him that they gave him an immortality potion.
“A greedy man tries to steal it,” shares Sally Li, Chinese bilingual library assistant. “But Chang’e drinks it to protect it from the bad man. She then flies all the way to the moon… So every year the husband looks at the moon for his wife.”
Enjoy these traditional stories while celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival at the library. To learn more about these tales, take a look at the Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival booklist.