Essay 15 My Favorite Fairy Tale

Today, I called my best friend and asked her what she was doing. She replied, “I was reading fairy tales.” I laughed at her after getting the answer because those stories are for children. However, after finished the call, I felt an irresistible impulse to read fairy tale too. I remembered that fairy tales were also a beautiful memory of my childhood. As I was a little kid, my grandma used to tell fairy tales to me every night before sleeping. And my favorite stories were folktales. My grandma seemed have numerous folktales to tell. At that time, I wondered if those stories were real or not and I always wanted to be the characters of some stories. Like the story about Nu wa who is the Chinese female God of making human being; the story about Pan gu who is a giant and he scarified himself to form the earth; the story about Hou Yi and so on. However, among those folktales, my favorite one is "Chang E flying to the Moon". There are many versions about this story but I personally think that the one I got from my Grandma is the best.

"Chang E flying to the Moon" is a very beautiful love folktale with a sad ending. Long long time ago, there was a very beautiful lady whose name was Chang E. She had a very happy family. Her husband was the hero who shot down nice suns among ten (It is sad that there were ten suns in the sky and people suffered a lot). She also had two lovely children one was a body and the other one was a girl. Every one admired this family. Some day, Hou yi got a magic pill from God. This pill would bring people to the heaven and keep people young and everlasting. However, the thing was known by Lian Meng, a bad guy who wanted to get it. One day, Hou Yi went out go hunting, Lian Meng slipped into the house of Chang E and threatened her to get the pill out. Under such dangerous situation, Chang E had no way except swallowing the pill. After that, her body started to fly aloft and then disappeared. It was a grief to Hou Yi. He couldn’t stand missing his wife so he shouted her wife’s name toward the sky at night. Suddenly, he found that the moon was extremely round and big. He could see a figure was moving in the moon which looked like her wife. He hurriedly put the offering on the table in the garden and hoped that Chang E could get back. The god was moved by the sincere of Hou Yi. So she allowed them to see each other once a year on the 15th day of the eight month when the moon is at its fullest and brightest.

Because of this beautiful folktale, people set up this day as the commemoration day for remembering the love of the couple. This day is also called the Mid-autumn Day. On this day, Chinese people would like to appreciate the round moon as well as eating moon cakes with the family. Sometime I could really see a figure appear on the Moon. =D