Why is there a lady on the moon?

In the West there is a man in the moon. In China there is a woman, and she never meant to go.

This came to you because someone wanted you at their table. Before you look at what is inside, here is the story that goes with it.

Her name is Chang'e, and she and her husband Houyi once lived in heaven. The story goes that ten suns rose into the sky at once and the earth burned. Houyi, the finest archer in heaven, was sent to put it right. He shot down nine of them and left one, the one we still have. But the suns had been the Jade Emperor's sons, and in his grief the Emperor banished the couple to earth, mortal now, to grow old and die like everyone else.

Houyi could not accept it. He travelled to the far western mountains and came back with an elixir from the Queen Mother of the West. Half of it would give a person life without end. All of it would lift them back to heaven. The plan was to share it. But a tragic accident made Chang'e the only one of the two to drink it, and she drank it all. She felt her limbs grow weightless and began to float into the sky against her will. A banished goddess could not return to heaven, and she could no longer stay on earth, so she drifted to the desolate moon, where she has lived ever since in a lonely palace, with only a white rabbit for company.

And Houyi? He stayed on earth. Every year, on the night the moon was fullest and closest, he set out her favourite fruits and cakes in the garden and looked up, because that was as near as he could get. Some say that on that one night the winds let him cross the sky, and they were together until morning. That is why the Chinese also call it the Reunion Festival.

Three thousand years later, that is still what the night is for. Families light lanterns, set a table under the sky, and sit there catching up, eating moon cakes and looking at the same moon.

Twelve hundred years ago the poet Zhang Jiuling put it in two lines, and people still say them on this night:  

海上生明月，天涯共此時。

 As the bright moon rises over the sea, at the ends of the earth we share this moment. 

Round moon, round table, and a round cake cut into wedges so that nobody gets their own. You get a share of one. On the night the moon is whole, the family should be too, and everyone is counted. The ones far away. The ones who have gone on ahead. Chang'e and Houyi, one night a year. 

You do not need mooncakes or lanterns to celebrate it. On the night of the fullest moon this autumn, cut something round into wedges and hand the pieces out. Then step outside, look up, and think of the person who sent this, and of who you would want at your table.