Jade Rabbit in Chinese:
玉兔 · Yùtù.

玉 (yù) means jade. 兔 (tù) means rabbit or hare. Together they form 玉兔 (Yùtù), the Jade Rabbit. Both syllables take a falling fourth tone. In pinyin, the ü sound is written u after y, so the spelling yù does not use the same vowel as tù.

You may see the name spaced as “Yu Tu” in English. “Yùtù” shows the tones and joins the two syllables as one name. The Chinese characters 玉兔 do not change between simplified and traditional writing.

兔子 is the ordinary animal word, with a neutral-tone zi. 月兔 names a rabbit of the moon more directly. In the title 月亮上的玉兔, 月亮上 means “on the moon,” so the whole title means “the Jade Rabbit on the moon.”

玉兔捣药 (yùtù dǎo yào) describes the Jade Rabbit pounding medicine. 捣 is the action of pounding or crushing; 药 is medicine. A mortar holds the ingredients, and a pestle is used to pound them.

This is an old visual motif, not just a detail invented for modern children’s books. The Ashmolean’s catalogue of an eighth-century bronze mirror identifies a lunar hare beside a mortar and pestle, together with Chang’e, a toad, and a tree.

The catalogue mentions different accounts of what the hare grinds, including an immortality herb and cassia. When describing an image, start with what is visible—the rabbit, vessel, and pounding tool—then explain the tradition. The same recognizable symbols do not always imply an identical plot.

Chang’e (嫦娥, Cháng’é) and the Jade Rabbit are separate figures. Learning both names makes it easier to follow moon stories without confusing the goddess with the animal beside her.

Our Jade Rabbit reading text follows the rabbit at work on the moon and children looking for it at Mid-Autumn. Read the Chinese with pinyin, listen to the audio, and use the English translation to check the action. It is a short learning retelling, not an explanation of every tradition about how the rabbit reached the moon.

Try finding three things as you read: what the rabbit does every day, what it looks at when it stops working, and who looks for it. Then compare the scene with Chang’e Flies to the Moon, which tells how the goddess leaves the human world.