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Showing posts from June, 2015

Fu Xi Teaches the People

Pangu separated the sky and the earth, then he died and his body turned into mountains, rivers, plants, animals, and everything else in the world, among which was Hua Xu. While Hua Xu was wandering through Lei Ze Marshes, she trod on the toes of a giant footprint and became pregnant. Later she gave birth to a twin brother and sister, Fu Xi and Nü Wa. Fu Xi and Nü Wa have faces of human and bodies of snakes. Nü Wa molded figures from the yellow earth and gave them life by breathing into their nostrils. In the beginning there was as yet no moral or social order among her offspring. Men knew their mothers only, not their fathers. When hungry, they searched for food; when satisfied, they threw away the remnants. They devoured their food hid and hair, drank the blood, and clad themselves in skins and rushes. Then came Fu Xi and taught his subjects to cook, to fish with nets, to hunt with weapons made of bone, wood, or bamboo, and to domesticate animals. He united man and wife, institu...

Nüwa Creates People

One day, the Goddess Nüwa came down upon the Earth, and found it to be enchanting, but empty. She sat by a river and felt very lonely. She gazed at her reflection in the water, and suddenly she knew what was missing: She wanted the world to be filled with thinking, laughing creatures like herself. The river stretched out before her, its waves slapping the shore. The cloudy green waters left a rim of thick yellow earth along its banks.  Nüwa felt its slippery texture with her fingertips and scooped out a ball of clay. The cool, sticky earth deposited by the river was perfect for her task, and she rolled the damp clay into a doll, giving it a head, shoulders, chest, and arms like her own. Finally, she attached two legs to the new creature so it could both walk on land and paddle about in the sea. From the many shades of yellow earth,  Nüwa made all kinds of dolls: tall and short, thin and fat, curly-haired and straight-haired, dolls with eyes as round and large as cherries, ...

Pangu Creates the World

Once, the world was a mass of swirling darkness. There was no heaven. There was no earth. All the forces of the universe were trapped inside a small egg, tumbling and spinning in utter chaos. Inside the egg was a tiny creature named Pangu. He slept soundly, unbothered by the disorder around him. As he slept, Pangu grew, and the egg also grew around him.  For eighteen thousand years Pangu slumbered peacefully, until he had developed into a well-formed, muscular giant whose body spanned ninety thousand li. In perfect harmony with Pangu’s body, the eggshell also stretched, straining to hold both the expanding giant and the turbulent gases of the world inside its boundaries. One day when the universe was especially unstable, Pangu woke up. All around, he saw nothing but darkness and confusion. At first, he was intrigued by the irregular rhythms of the world. He watched, fascinated, as whirling particles burst and scattered around him. Quickly, he learned to dodge exploding gases by n...

Qi the Abandoned One or the Legend of Hou Ji

At the beginning, the Jiang tribe settled on the plain along the Yellow River. A girl of this tribe named Jiang Yuan was virtuous and reverent to God. Jiang Yuan was betrothed and then married to Emperor Ku, but she was barren, so she presented pure offerings to God and sacrificed and prayed God to take away her childlessness. The next day she went out to the field, and saw a big foot print on the road, she was curious because of the huge size. So she put her own foot inside the big foot print to measure it. Suddenly she was moved and felt strange. Then she knew she had trod in the foot print of God, and had become pregnant. She came back to her home, and rested. When she had fulfilled her months, she gave birth to a son, who came forth like a lamb, there was no bursting, nor rending, no injury, no hurt. But the birth of this child was so odd that Mother Jiang Yuan felt bewildered and tried to abandon her newborn baby. First the boy was placed in a narrow lane, but the sheep and o...