Houyi- Chinese HeroHero"Divine Archer"

The Ten Suns

The ten suns were children of the sky god Di Jun and the sun goddess Xihe. They roosted in the branches of the Fusang tree at the eastern edge of the world, and each day one crossed the sky while the others rested. One day, all ten rose together.

The combined heat scorched the earth. Rivers evaporated. Crops withered. Monsters crawled out of drying swamps and burning forests to prey on the survivors. Emperor Yao begged Di Jun to control his sons. Di Jun could not command them. He sent Houyi to earth with a vermillion bow and a quiver of white arrows, expecting the archer to frighten the suns back into obedience.

Houyi found a dying world. He climbed the peak of a high mountain, raised his bow, and shot the nearest sun out of the sky. It exploded in fire and feathers, because the suns were also three-legged golden crows. Arrow after arrow, he brought them down. The Huainanzi records that Emperor Yao, realizing Houyi meant to shoot every last one, had an attendant slip one arrow from the quiver. When the archer reached for his tenth shot, the quiver was empty. Nine suns lay fallen. One remained. It still lights the world.

Banished

Di Jun's nine sons were dead. Though Houyi had saved humanity, he had killed the sky god's children. Di Jun stripped him and his wife Chang'e of their divinity and cast them both to earth as mortals, subject to age and death.

Monsters had crawled from the chaos of the ten suns, and Houyi hunted them. The Huainanzi names six kills: Zaochi, a tusked beast terrorizing the southern marshes, and Jiuying, a nine-headed serpent whose mouths spewed fire and water at once. He killed four more across the breadth of the land before the earth was safe. But he was still mortal. He was still aging. And Chang'e, who had committed no crime, mourned her lost immortality in silence.

The Elixir

Houyi traveled to the Kunlun Mountains to find Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. He crossed the Ruo River, whose waters could not support even a feather, and scaled mountains guarded by celestial beasts. Xiwangmu received him beside the Turquoise Pond and gave him a single dose of the elixir of immortality. Enough for two to become immortal, or for one to ascend directly to heaven.

Houyi brought it home to share with Chang'e on an auspicious day. In the Huainanzi, Chang'e stole the elixir and drank it while he was away. The full dose was too powerful. She floated up through the ceiling and did not stop until she reached the moon. Later tellings softened her: in Ming and Qing period versions, she drank it to keep the elixir from Feng Meng, Houyi's treacherous apprentice, who broke into their home while the archer was hunting.

Houyi returned to an empty house. He could see the moon. He could not reach it.

The Peach-Wood Club

Houyi's end came from behind. In the Mengzi, his apprentice Feng Meng had learned everything the master could teach and concluded there was only one archer in the world better than himself. He ambushed Houyi with a peach-wood club, because arrows could not harm the master archer.

Qu Yuan names him in the Chuci: why was the sun-shooter punished? Why did the wife flee?