Photo by Lewis Purcell
It was a sunny, September morning, and I was making my usual journey to work from Vancouver into Richmond. The perilous Knight Street bridge was bustling as usual, and the air was heavy with dust and heat. The trucks were sliding in and out of lanes like elephants on roller skates. Drivers avoided eye contact, determined to cross the bridge, miraculously surviving both the heat wave and the cars weaving in and out on each side.
Then it happened. A car sped in, swerving to switch sides, and there was the fender bender – I veered, the wheel busted and I was stuck. My hand moved over to the horn, but the car continued on its reckless journey. And I was stuck. The only thing was, I was pregnant. Just a month pregnant and the secret joyous high I had been riding started to dissipate. How was my floating fetus feeling after that jolt?
Listening to the radio, I realized that I was the reason for the “stall” on the Knight Street Bridge as cars honked belligerently as they passed me by. I waited for a tow truck to somehow reach me through the wave upon wave of cars cruising the crowded bridge. My mind wandered, as it often can when one is waiting for a tow truck in the sweltering heat.
The Mid-Autumn Festival was fast approaching and I had grown up with the story of Chang’e, the moon goddess and her rabbit companion. Born at the tail end of the Rabbit year, this tale had been lovingly told, year after year, throughout my childhood.
The following is my re-imagining of the classic East Asian myth, conceived during my pregnancy when reflecting on XiHe, the sun goddess’s point of view. In the tale, XiHe had nine baby suns that caused the earth to burn up. Hou Yi, Chang’e’s beau and beloved, a famed archer, takes down her sons one by one and is lauded as a hero in this traditional tale.
Yellow, orange, red. Burning leaves like flames drifting in the wind.
A chaotic hullabaloo, a pack of ten children cascading, twirling, bouncing, ricocheting down a road of blue silk. Lan, lan, lan. Crossing skies and oceans.
XiHe shepherding, corralling her little ten suns down to their home of mulberry trees. Sour sweet taste. Jammy fingers, little voices: “Mama, mama!” Bright, bright eyes, looking for cuddles.
“Mama!” Mama is plucking mulberries, harvesting them and tomorrow she will usher them to the market. Medicines for the Gods in her rough, trusted hands.
Pulsing, beating mulberries. A heart of their own.
“Mama! I will feed the silkworms!” Leaves are food for the silkworms, weaving a blue road across the sky. XiHe glances at her baby boy. Mama nods her head with a smile as another sun rolls at her feet.
Below the beams of light, a young girl, Chang’e, woke. There was no morning bowl of congee. The smell of soft rice wafting gently into sleep, the sharp tang of ginger, the silent alarm was nowhere to be heard. Carefully curated black duck eggs, pieces of freshly ground pork, the work of grandma’s hands, a comforting scent obscure.
“Quickly, quickly, kuai, kuai!” Chang’e hears the words, trips on her cotton skirt, and blazes of pastel colours.
Chang’e grabs her rabbit toy. Between her fingers, smooth jade and wood with intricately carved lines.
“Luck for you,” Mama used to say, “Rabbit girls are good girls.”
Chang’e looked up, fire was falling from the sky like rain, crackling thunder, wave after small waves, clustered together then apart. One echo into another.
“Nai nai!” Chang’e screamed. Grandma’s nose is a gaping hole, her mouth is slack, her gums and teeth revealed, face singed. Her eyes were sealed shut, unable to open. Smoky fumes peacefully surround her face.
Chang’e grabs her rabbit, TuZi, squirming under Nai Nai. She drops her wooden toy and runs.
Chang’e runs, heat encompassing her, she doesn’t know if she is running or dreaming. She collapses and wakes to see a circle of children.
“Here, have some. You look hungry.”
Chang’e snatches a handful of the wok-tossed crickets.
“Tastes just like chicken skin,” a boy with a big smile says, bug eyes stuck to his teeth.
Chang’e closes her eyes, crunching and munching on the crickets.
“We got grasshoppers too!” Another child shouted happily, dancing around the fired wok.
The next day, Chang’e clutches TuZi as an older girl gently takes her aside, “We have to, there is no food”.
Chang’e looks into TuZi’s gentle eyes, liquid tears dripping.
She releases him and a few moments later hears the quick sound, a snap of the neck. The children cheer, a few bites of dinner tonight.
The next day, a beautiful lady, elegantly dressed in a gown of dark blue silk looks carefully at Chang’e.
“She’s perfect! She looks like an edible flower!” Her partner in a bright fuchsia pink whispered excitedly.
“Skin like just blooming chrysanthemums, cheeks touched by pink lotuses, lips like the shapely hibiscus…she’ll make us as much as the tea merchants!”
“Eyes like oolong tea that shift in the light…she’ll make us more than the tea merchants,” the lady in dark blue muttered.
“We’ll take her,” the stout lady in fuchsia pink beamed.
Chang’e carefully rolls the glutinous rice flour and steamed pumpkins. The scent of brown sugar and toasted sesame seeds fills the air. Pan-fried just right. Red bean paste for a sweet center.
The hero with the bow and arrows sitting at their table. No tea with breakfast, just wine and plum juice with a toothy smile.
Smiles for Chang’e, the girl with the lively willow waist, who could dance, somewhat read poetry, and flatten pumpkin pancakes.
Chang’e pets her second Tu Zi and takes him in her arms as the hero gently takes her hand, pops her in a porcelain vase and adds her to his collection. He takes care to place his new bride on the altar.
Chang’e watches with the other concubines as in the blazing heat, platter upon platter of food is brought to HouYi and his merry team. Soldiers straining against a drought-ridden landscape, delivering dishes of pork, duck and pheasant, so strong was his bow.
Plates upon plates of freshly steamed yams, soya beans, fermented black beans, dashed with spring onions, so true were his arrows.
Small boats of bird’s nest soup, deep sea soups, so trusted was his intuition.
And wine, jugs of wine made from rice and millet, carried by young men through the desert. Breakfast.
Today was the day. Hou Yi stretched his arms, he was on his fourth round. “Watch,” his voice thundered, “my arrows speak for themselves.”
Chang’e watched another screaming spirit skydive from the sky.
Hou Yi stretched his arms yet again. “STOP!” A voice like a clear strong wind, nails like spider bites dug into his arms. Hou Yi missed, aiming his arrow up into a cloud. He watched in horror as it was swallowed before being spit down back to earth.
“My streak!” He screamed. He threw the perpetrator at a tree. He looked in surprise at Chang’e, his lips twisted purple with anger.
“There’s a child in the sun!” Chang’e cried, “I see little round arms and legs, a small forehead falling headfirst!”
“What nonsense is this? Take her to her chambers…she isn’t well.”
“Tiny hands, a wailing mouth!” Chang’e cried, “These suns, they have the shape of toddlers!”
“I see it too!”
“He is shooting down gods!”
“Take her away!” Hou Yi boomed.
Chang’e woke with a headache. Before her stood a woman dressed in elegant blue.
“Here, take this,” The matchmaker said coldly, “As you have no family, we will deliver to you Hou Yi’s final wish. It is his desire that you have this with a drink of your choice.” Her palm revealed a tiny golden pill, perfectly round, a small inscriptive pattern in the center.
“You have become a liability,” the second matchmaker wept, before adding, “You have soiled our names.”
“He has one for your TuZi as well,” said the matchmaker, placing a smaller pill into her palm.
Chang’e felt herself floating, floating, up, up, up. TuZi hopped along by her side. She settled onto her new, lunar home, watching joyous celebrations down below as blazes of light disappeared. Her favourite light blue dress with the pink lotuses turned slowly to dust.
Across the way, she noticed XiHe. “The mighty sun, weeping,” Chang’e thought to herself.
XiHe’s little suns had forgotten the silkworms as they tussled. Rolling, rolling, rolling, tumbling through mulberry bushes, falling through towards earth. Leaves drifting down from their playful force, the sweetness of mulberries plummeting like sparks of rain fire. A baby sun calls, “Mama!”
With soundless wails, Xihe claws at her throat. Tearing the strands of red, her hair fell upon the tiles. Surrounded by stillness.
A sun frantic kicks, he rolls slightly, inching then rolling back before slowing to a halt. Light floods the floors with warmth, golden shadows stretch out. Fading, fading into an amber haze and disappearing into an abyss of grey.
XiHe follows the grey as new gradations of blue form, illuminated by golden shadows that cannot be caught, forever playing and laughing in the wind. XiHe follows the blue Silk Road across the sky. She takes her journey past empires on the way to the market, with her mulberry medicines.
As I gazed up from the Knight Street Bridge at the blue sky on that summery autumn day, she gave a slight smile of warmth, mother to mother.
Sharleen Sendjaya-Wu was born to parents of Chinese Indonesian heritage. She has degrees in English Literature and Education from the University of British Columbia and works as a teacher in the Vancouver area. Her writing is inspired by explorations of her cultural identity and her experiences of motherhood. When she’s not teaching or writing, she’s going on adventures with her young son.