With the Empress Dowager of China by Katharine A. Carl

We think the Chinese so unemotional, so little given to pleasure or amusement; but there are more popular festivals in China, indulged in by all classes of people, than in any country in the world, except perhaps Japan. The people, from the highest to the lowest, enter into these celebrations with whole-souled earnestness and real enjoyment, and all the popular festivals, as well as the religious ceremonies, are celebrated in the Palace with apparently the same zest as among the people.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, popularly known as the Festival of the Harvest Moon, which is at its full at the time of the celebration, was, of course, observed with due ceremony at the Palace. For these festivals there are always representations at the Palace Theater, and one of the plays on such days is the dramatization of the Legend of the Festival. The legend of the Harvest Moon is this: One day an Emperor received the visit of a fairy. When she left she gave the Emperor an herb, saying, should he eat it, he would be endowed with Immortality. The Emperor was called out, soon after the fairy's visit, and forgot the gift for a time, and the herb lay upon his table. During his absence from the Throne-room, a young handmaiden entered and, seeing the root on the table, with childish curiosity, tasted it, and, finding it good, ate the whole of it. When the Emperor again thought of his precious gift from the fairy, he hastened back to the Throne-room, to remove it from the table where he had left it. What was his horror to find it gone! Learning that the little handmaid was the only person who had been in the Throne-room, he called her up to find out what she had done with it. When he found she had eaten it, he ordered her killed, that he might thus again obtain the herb. Before the eunuchs could accomplish their task, the charm began to work, and she felt the wings of Immortality; and borne up by them, she flew to the skies and took refuge in the Moon, where she still lives with the pet white rabbit she had in her arms at the time she flew away from the earth. She is now an Immortal, and in the Moon she compounds the Elixir of Immortality. The rabbit, also, shares her immortality, and ever watches at the lunar threshold.