Chang'e 嫦娥
Chang'e lives on the Moon, where, according to legend, she flew after drinking the elixir of immortality. The ancient tale does not explain why she decided to drink it. Later, some storytellers saw her act as theft, while others believed she was saving the potion from falling into the wrong hands. In cinema, this grew into both tales of separation and stories in which the goddess herself can explain her actions.
In early texts, Chang'e (嫦娥) appears under the name Heng'e. In the Huainanzi, the archer Yi asks Queen Mother of the West for the elixir of immortality, but Heng'e takes it and flies to the Moon. This account is very brief. In one later version, Chang'e's husband, Hou Yi, goes out hunting, and his apprentice Fengmeng tries to seize the elixir. Chang'e drinks the potion so that it will not fall into his hands. And so Chang'e is parted from her husband against her will.
On Tang dynasty mirrors, the lunar palace was depicted with an osmanthus tree, a hare pounding the elixir in a mortar, and a toad. According to some legends, Chang'e herself turns into the toad. In other images she keeps her human form, and in flight she can be recognized by her long sleeves and ribbons. Her tale is also told at the Mid-Autumn Festival, when it is customary to admire the full Moon.
In the 1986 Journey to the West, Chang'e was played by Qiu Pei-Ning, and in Lotus Lantern (2005) by Yan Dan-Chen. In the animated film Over the Moon (2020), a girl named Fei Fei builds a rocket so that she can see the heroine of the legend for herself. On the Moon, Chang'e turns out to be a singer who has her own reasons for waiting for her beloved to return. In the English version, she was voiced by Phillipa Soo.
