The Chusok Bunny is Coming

Next week Tuesday is the 15th day of the 8th month on the lunar calendar! Happily for me (and many others living in Asia), we can have a day off for our host country's respective mid-autumn festival. What makes this day so auspicious is the FULL MOON! Hopefully, my friend Farheen in Vancouver will not be busy surprising people with her sudden tranformation into a werewolf, but will be occupied with gazing at the moon with some lucky suitor!

And what do you see when you look at the moon? If you are in Korea, you will likely not be seeing a man's face, but rather a rabbit bent over a mortar pounding the glutinous rice for songpyun with his pestle. This makes good sense to me (seeing as songpyun is the sweet eaten on Chusok - Korea's mid-Autumn -or harvest - festival).

I asked some of my Taiwanese coworkers what they see when they look at the full moon. They agreed that they also see a rabbit, but the rabbit is grinding medicine, not glutinous rice. When I asked them WHY MEDICINE, none of them could answer. You see, on Moon Festival in Taiwan, neither songpyun nor medicine are made by locals... They are too busy barbecuing, lighting fireworks, making pomelo hats and eating moon cakes. Anyway, the editors in my team have since provided me with the following Moon Festival (Taiwan and China's Mid-Autumn celebration) stories... and rabbit explanations:

1. The story of Chang-Er
Once upon a time, there was an evil tyrant... wait! The Internet tells a different story! The local editors omitted the 10 suns! Please see the story from this link below:

The time of this story is around 2170 B.C. The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each took its turn to illuminate to the earth. But one day all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved by a strong and tyrannical archer Hou Yi. He succeeded in shooting down nine of the suns. One day, Hou Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However his beautiful wife Chang Er drank the elixir of life in order to save the people from her husband's tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating and flew to the moon. Hou Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he didn't shoot down the moon.

2. The story of the Rabbit and the Moon (The Jade Rabbit)

In this legend, three fairy sages transformed themselves into pitiful old men and begged for something to eat from a fox, a monkey and a rabbit. The fox and the monkey both had food to give to the old men, but the rabbit, empty-handed, offered his own flesh instead, jumping into a blazing fire to cook himself. The sages were so touched by the rabbit's sacrifice that they let him live in the Moon Palace where he became the "Jade Rabbit."

I guess the editors figure these are connected. It logically figures that since Chang-Er is the goddess of the moon, that the rabbit is now keeping her company. Perhaps he is mixing up more of the elixir of life to help her keep her goddess state?