spreads a picnic mat

i'll talk about one of my fave chinese legends today... it's the story of Hou Yi Shooting The Suns

long long ago, there were ten suns. they were all kids of this sky god called dingjun and they were all also three-legged crows

that are also suns. its kinda like yatagarasu but ten of them

according to routine one of the ten suns would go across the sky everyday and they rotated once every ten dayas

*days

but then one day they all decided to go up all at once for fun

because of this there were ten suns in the sky and Massive Catastrophe was had

sits

the sea dried up, crops wilted, grasslands set themselves on fire, people died of heatstroke etc etc

so of course Dingjun was like Oh Crap so he asked this famous celestial archer, Hou Yi, to help scare/punish his wayward sons

sons, suns, get it? ha ha

ANYWAY. so hou yi was like sure, lemme get my bow

so he takes his bow and he walks down to earht and goes OH CRAP!! because everyone is dying and that is not Ok

so he says, hey suns, all 10 of them, can you chill

but they're arrogant little crows and they go 'we do what we want! you cant scare us!!!'

Hou Yi got angry so he pulled out his bow and threatens to shoot them if they don't chill

surprise, they don't chill. so he shot one

then he figured since he already shot one and Dingjun is gonna have his ass later, he might as well shoot the rest as a preventative measure

so he shot like 8 more

of those three-legged crows

until Dingjun realized what was happening and rushed over like HEY STOP KILLING MY CHILDREn

only one sun bird was left because if he shot the very last one the world will be plunged inot eternal darkness

because of this, Hou Yi was hailed as a hero by humans, but Dingjun didn't like him MURDERING LIKE 9/10 OF HIS SONS so he banished Hou Yi down to earth

(there are a lot of variations of this tale so I'm just telling the one common to my region)

the moral of the story is to not leave your children unattended especially if they are powerful beyond their maturity and/or are three-legged suns

ftr, the last sun got a lot more obedient after watching all his bros get murdered

and this is why we have regular rising and setting of the sun instead of massive drought everywhere, according to chinese myth

I think all of us can appreciate that moral.

yeah

KEEP UR CHILDREN IN LINE, U NEVER KNOW WHAT HAVOC THEY MIGHT WRECK

there's a second part to this story about Hou Yi, he became a pretty tragic guy, i'll tell that one in a bit after i get some tea

sits here too

sits on everyone else

Doesn't it also become the one that Tanabata's based on...

Or did I get my legends mixed up

yep that's Part 2

whcih i will tell now

so okay. Hou Yi got banished down to earth for shooting 9 sunbirds

he's sad but well, it can't be helped, he's also a hero to humans for saving the earth from Certain Destruction through Roasting

he's not an immortal anymore but he still has the amazing archery skills that let him shoot 9 suns so he travels around pacifying demons

he did a couple of things which vary through retelling but the most important one was putting this dragon god in hsi place

there was a dragon god stirring up trouble in a river and flooding the plains around it, so Hou Yi used his Divine Sight and shot an arrow into the floodwaters

it hit the dragon god straight in the eye who went OW and shot straight up above the surface to accost him, but he shot a few more arrows which hit the god in several more places

so the dragon god fled, supposedly never to return

in succeession his followers also fled behind him, so Hou Yi shot a few more arrows as a sort of warning

but as he was about to shoot the last follower, he realized it was a young lady so he tilted his bow so his arrow went through her hair instead

the lady was left behind and it turns out shes the daughter of the dragon that had left

so of course he does what Every Reasonable Hero does which is to ask for her hand in marriage

shes very pretty, and since Hou Yi is a Famous Hero she says yes and they get married

(don't question it)

shes the Chang'e from the moon legend

so they get married. For his service to humankind, Hou Yi gets an imperial title and he settles down (finally)!!

but we have a slight problem

while Hou Yi didn't care jack shit about heaven, he didn't want to die

so he went on a search for an elixir of immortality

the Fairy Queen of the West, Xi Wangmu, had some, so he traveled to the mountain peaks where she lived to ask for some

she promised to give him elixir in exchange for him building her an extravagant house, so he did build her the house and she gave him the elixirs

but those were the last 2 she had so she told him to keep it carefully

he planned to give one to himself and give one to his wife

HOWEVER there was a catch

since he settled down, he also happened to take apprentice archers, and one of them, Feng Meng, overheard what he told his wife

Feng Meng was a bad egg and got jealous of his mentor even when his mentor was a good teacher

(it cant be helped though since Hou Yi is, after all, a divine being)

so when Hou Yi was out vanquishing demons, he broke into Hou Yi's house and tried to steal the elixirs

Chang'e was home and tried to fend him off, but she wasn't strong enough

so to prevent the elixir from falling into the apprentice's hands, she drank both of them... which made her not only immortal, it made her ascend to the moon

Hou Yi was coming home at that time so he saw his wife rising up crying for his help but alas he coudln't do anything and she went to the moon where she lives in a palace with only rabbit companions

so of course he was hella mad now that not only is his elixir gone, but also his wife

the apprentice fled and escaped Hou Yi's wrath

and then he rounded up a couple of other people and murdered his teacher

Hou Yi was outnumbered despite outmatching the other archers in skill

here the story gets a bit murky, in some tellings the apprentice got shot dead by his teacher but in other cases he escapes to live on as a branded coward

but basically the great celestial archer dies by the hands of the people he wanted to protect

and his wife is in the moon. it is not a good ending

idk what the moral of this one is but... dont keep your precious things out in the open??? choose your students wisely???

- okay, i'm back from my shower

ngl i do want to see him as a fate/ servant but i doubt chinese servants will make their debut anytime

soon....

Vyndasia just imagine?? he would be one of the best archers around

on par with arash or maybe even gil

I personally do not subscribe to the notion that chinese legends are encompassed within whatever gil has, because ancient china is concurrent with the time period that

the epic of gilgamesh was written, so ancient mesopotamia and ancient china are temporarlly concurrent

so one can't be derived from the other, etc etc

XI WANGMU
MEGATEN INTENSIFIES

BASICALLY

wow i'd heard the ten suns part of this but never the part two

thank you

yw! the more you know

....how fascinating. Gosh, I love storytime with Eon.

I thought Chang'e was the more famous of the pair

Also Hou Yi for Grand Archer kthxx

librariansheart I'm glad I'll do this more often

skiiage it depends on which region of China you're in, TBH. their fame relative to each other varies

and YEAH BASICALLY he would make a good servant.... his backstory especially

but lmfao we will probably never get Chinese servants

!! Yes please! /chinhands

I could ping you next time if you'd like

you are so good to me.