Okay, who here would become immortal, given the chance? It's actually a pretty tricky question, even if we're working from a simple "vanilla" version of immortality, where you stay young and hot forever. And, while many great heroes pursue immortality, usually they either fail to get it, or it goes completely un-remarked on in the narrative, or getting it kicks off a happily-ever-after where we never address any potential negative consequences. I don't actually know of that many stories where immortality is the end goal, but it's also framed in any kind of ambiguous or tragic light. Except for one: the tragic tale of Hou Yi and Chang'e, also known as "Why the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program Keeps Naming its Probes After this One Girl." Also, as always, my pronunciation sucks, I apologize in advance, I promise you this hurts me a LOT more than it hurts you. So our old friend the Jade Emperor has 10 unruly sons, and one day (presumably for the sheer punnage of it all), they all decide to turn into 10 LITERAL suns, and start scorching the earth en masse. This obviously has detrimental effects on the quality of life for humanity overall, and after trying and failing to parent his kids into stopping, the Jade Emperor decides it's time to call in some professional help. So the Jade Emperor summons Hou Yi, the Divine Archer, and asks him to make his sons stop with the sun-ing. Hou Yi agrees, and does what he does best, by which I mean he shoots nine of the suns out of the sky, leaving only one sun (as it should be). Unfortunately, the Jade Emperor is shocked - - shocked, I tell you! - that the arrow guy he commissioned to shoot arrows shot arrows at the people he pointed them at. And, as punishment, he exiles Hou Yi and his wife, Chang'e, to earth, stripping them of their divinity and rendering them fully mortal. The couple doesn't take this very well. Mortal life is, unsurprisingly, really hard. Even for a skilled archer like Hou Yi who doesn't have much trouble hunting. And, to make matters worse, Chang'e is EXTRA bummed and grumpy, because she really didn't do anything to deserve this punishment. To make matters worse, they're both increasingly dreading the specter of their own mortality: something neither of them were prepared for, having both been immortal gods. So Hou Yi is determined to find a way to regain their immortality, and embarks on (what else) an epic quest to the mountains of Kunlun to seek the elixir of immortality from the Queen Mother of the West, who presumably lives two doors down from wherever they trained Iron Fist. So Hou Yi calls on the last of his divine mojo to overcome the trials to reach Kunlun, and when he finally arrives, the Queen Mother is sympathetic to his situation and gives him a small box containing the elixir of immortality. She tells him that it contains enough immortality juice to make two people regular immortal, or one person full-on GOD immortal. So he and Chang'e are gonna have to split it if they don't wanna wind up separated. And she warns him that the peaches it's made from only grow every 6,000 years, so if he screws this up, he's lost his shot for good. Now, while Hou Yi is cool with this "discount" immortality, Chang'e misses her divinity and isn't willing to settle for 50%. Instead, when Hou Yi returns with the elixir, she downs the whole thing and becomes a full-on goddess again. But the problem is, she's still exiled from heaven, so now she's not welcome on either earth or in the court of heaven. And, with nowhere else to go, she drifts up to the moon and makes her home there. Hou Yi, meanwhile, is stuck as a full-on mortal with no way out, lives a tragically short life, and winds up getting murdered by one of his apprentices a few years later. Let's call this resounding bummer the "bad end." But, the existence of a "bad end" implies a "true end," and don't you worry, this legend actually does have a much sunnier finale that's rather more popular, and is, in fact, credited as kicking off the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. The true ending differs from the bad ending in two key ways. First, rather than acquiring a double dose of the elixir, Hou Yi only gets enough for one of them. And secondly, neither one of them wants to abandon the other for immortality in perpetual godhood. So, rather than Chang'e downing the immortality juice to restore her divinity, the couple agrees to keep the elixir stored away to deal with it at a later date. And instead of being increasingly tormented by the looming specter of inevitable death, they live fairly normal lives, adjusting to their mortality decently well. But years later, one of Hou Yi's apprentices, a dude named Feng Meng, learns about the elixir and breaks into their house to steal it while Hou Yi is out hunting. He attacks Chang'e, and realizing that her only options are die and let this a-hole become immortal or become immortal before he does, Chang'e downs the elixir in a pretty moving act of self-sacrifice, and ascends out of Feng Meng's reach as well as mortality in general. Now an immortal goddess again, she can no longer live on earth with her husband, but she opts to live on the moon to be closer to him than the rest of heaven. And he, in turn, leaves out those sacrifices of her favorite fruits and cakes. And while Hou Yi lives and dies a mortal lifespan, Chang'e lives on as the moon goddess, and conveniently justifies the yearly consumption of these bad boys. Seriously, give them a shot if you haven't already. Well, I guess that tears it. Given the choice between boyfriends and the moon, girls pick the moon every time. -Music cover of Lonely Boy by The Black Keys-
