On 20 July 1969, a few hours before two men would walk on the Moon, Mission Control in Houston read the Apollo 11 crew a little news bulletin.
It was about a woman. A very old legend, Houston said, told of a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o who had been living on the Moon for four thousand years. She'd been banished there for stealing a pill of immortality. And she had a large rabbit with her. The astronauts might want to look out for them.
Buzz Aldrin's reply is in the official NASA transcript.
"Okay. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl."
He was joking, of course. But the story Houston was telling is one of the most loved in all of Asia, and it's far sadder and stranger than a bulletin could fit.
ITen suns
Long ago, the sky had ten suns. They were the children of the god of the east, and they were supposed to take turns crossing the sky, one each day. But one morning, all ten rose together.
The Earth began to burn. Rivers dried up, crops turned to ash, and people hid in caves from the heat.
So the gods sent an archer, Hou Yi, the greatest bowman who ever lived. He stood on a mountaintop, drew his bow, and shot the suns down one by one. Nine fell from the sky. He left the last one so the world would still have light.
The Earth was saved, and Hou Yi became a hero.
IIThe pill of immortality
As a reward, the Queen Mother of the West gave Hou Yi an elixir of immortality. But there was only enough for one person, and Hou Yi didn't want to live forever without his wife, Chang'e. So he gave it to her to keep safe, and they decided not to take it yet.
One of Hou Yi's students, a man called Peng Meng, found out. While Hou Yi was away hunting, Peng Meng broke into the house with a sword and demanded the elixir.
Chang'e couldn't fight him. So she did the only thing she could to stop him getting it. She drank it herself.
IIIRising
Immediately she felt herself becoming lighter. Her feet lifted off the floor. She floated out of the window and up into the night, higher and higher, past the clouds, past the birds. She wanted to stay close to her husband, so she chose the nearest place in the sky.
She came to rest on the Moon.
When Hou Yi came home and found out what had happened, he ran outside and called her name into the dark. That night, it's said, the Moon was brighter and rounder than it had ever been, and he could see a figure on it that looked like her.
He set out a table in the garden with her favourite fruits and cakes, as an offering to the Moon.
That, the story goes, is how the Mid-Autumn Festival began.
IVThe Jade Rabbit
Chang'e is not alone up there. She has a companion: the Jade Rabbit, who sits beneath a cassia tree, pounding the elixir of life with a pestle. Look at the full Moon, and many people in East Asia see the rabbit in the dark patches on its face, ears up, working away.
And every year, at the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, families gather under the brightest full Moon of the year, eat mooncakes, and look up at her.
VShe went to the Moon after all
Fifty years after Aldrin's joke, the story came full circle. China named its lunar programme Chang'e. In 2019, Chang'e 4 became the first spacecraft ever to land softly on the far side of the Moon, and its rover was called Yutu-2: Jade Rabbit 2. In 2024, Chang'e 6 brought back the first samples ever collected from the far side.
The bunny girl, it turns out, did go to the Moon. She just took a few thousand years to get the rest of us there.
Many traditions read the Moon as the part of you that feels: Western astrology has your Moon sign, Vedic astrology your nakshatra (the lunar mansion the Moon was in), and the Chinese calendar itself is built on the Moon's cycle. Even without a birth time, you can see what phase the Moon was in on the night you were born. Use the calculator below: were you born under a new Moon, a full Moon, or something in between?
VIThe Mid-Autumn Festival
On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, usually in September or early October, families across China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the rest of the world gather for the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's a harvest festival, a family reunion, and a night for the Moon.
People eat mooncakes, rich round pastries filled with lotus seed paste and often a salted egg yolk, the yolk standing in for the full Moon. Children carry lanterns. And people look up at the brightest full Moon of the year, for the woman and the rabbit.
There's another story told on that night: that during a rebellion long ago, secret messages were hidden inside mooncakes. Historians aren't sure it's true. People tell it anyway.
A question worth asking: who would you share a mooncake with under the full Moon, if you could have anyone at the table?
VIIThe loneliest goddess
Chang'e is a strange kind of goddess. She didn't win her immortality. She took it to protect it, and it cost her everything she loved.
Maybe that's why people still look up at her. Anyone who has made a hard choice to protect something important, and had to live with what it cost, knows how she feels.
Next full Moon, look for the rabbit. And if you can't find it, look for her.