Every year, on August 15 of the lunar calendar, the countries of the East Asian cultural sphere happen the Mid-Autumn Festival jubilantly. On this occasion, children are extremely excited to listen to the fairy tales related to Mid-Autumn Festival, especially the fairy tale of Moon Lady in Vietnam (also called Chang’e or Hằng Nga).
Fairy tale of Moon Lady in Vietnam.
The fairy tale of Moon Lady in Vietnam
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful and gentle girl named Chang’e (Vietnamese: Hằng Nga). She was the wife of a marksman in the world named Hou Yi (Vietnamese: Hậu Nghệ). He shot nine suns to save everyone from dying because of hotness. Therefore, He became very famous. Soon, he had a lot of disciples to go to his house for studying. Until one day, while going to Con Lon Island to meet his friends. On the way, he met Queen Mother of the West (Tây Vương Mẫu) and was given a kind of elixir, if he had drunk it, he would have flown straight to the Heaven.
Receiving a precious gift, Hou Yi was extremely happy. However, he did not want to leave his wife. He brought the pill home and gave it to his wife to store in a sealed jar. Bong Mong, one of Hau Nghe’s disciples knew this thing. He had an evil mind; once, when Hou Yi left home to hunt, Bong Mong pretended to be ill to stay home to steal the treasure. Hou Yi was very honest without a doubt.
As soon as Hou Yi just left, Bong Mong immediately brought a sword to threaten Chang’e to force her to give him the elixir. Hang Nga was unable to give the medicine to a wicked man; immediately she took the medicine. Miraculously, her body suddenly became light, no gravity, so she slowly followed the wind to the sky. Because her love for Hau Nghe was so deep, Queen Mother let her stop at the moon, the closest to the world of humans so that she could see her homeland.
When returning home, Hou Yi did not see his wife at home, rushed into the room to find the pill and did not see it; he realized that Chang’e had been taken to the sky, he was deeply sorry. Since then, every night he looked up at the high sky to find the wife but was hopeless. On the night of August 15, when the moon was bright and beautiful, he looked up to the sky, calling his wife’s name, he suddenly saw her on the moon. Immediately he set up an incense table to pray Moon Lady. Seeing Hou Yi do that, people in the region also do after him because they loved Moon Lady very much. Gradually that ceremony became the festival named Mid-Autumn Festival (Vietnamese: Tết Trung Thu) and has been handed down until today.
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