Ancient Domain
Cháng'é is the woman who swallowed forever and paid for it with the earth. Wife of the archer Hòuyì, who shot nine suns out of the sky, she came into possession of the elixir of immortality — a gift of the Queen Mother of the West, Xīwángmǔ — and drank it. Whether she acted to keep the drug from a treacherous disciple or out of her own longing, the sources divide; what they agree on is the result: her body grew light, the ground let go of her, and she rose through the night until the moon received her. There she remains, the goddess of the cold luminary, in the Guǎnghán Palace — the Palace of Vast Cold.
She is not alone up there. The Jade Rabbit stands beside her, pounding the elixir with mortar and pestle, and the woodcutter Wú Gāng swings his axe at a cassia tree that heals each wound as it is struck. Once a year, at the full moon of the eighth month, all of China looks up at her: the Mid-Autumn Festival, when families reunite, mooncakes are cut, and the distance between heaven and earth is measured in shared light.