Creation Stories in Chinese Mythology

this video is sponsored by surfsharkvpn [Music] have you ever gotten tired of these snake deities on these central plains i don't know if you guys imagined me learning all my chinese mythology from my family telling me bedtime stories but that was not what happened more like my parents left me with a bunch of chinese mythology cartoon dvds while they were out working but i have to admit those cartoons did make a strong impression on me i found out the universe was created by a hairy giant with an axe and that chinese people were created by a snake goddess so let me tell you a bit about those stories along with the further academic research that i did on their evolutions in the chinese folk religion world view in the beginning there was chaos this chaos was like a gigantic egg and in the egg slapped a bean called pangu pangu grew in the egg for 18 000 years then suddenly opened his eyes and discovered that there was nothing around him this made him so angry he could hardly bear it and thus he grabbed the axe he had been born with and slashed the cosmic egg of chaos open though a minor note here the axe was only added to the story around the ming dynasty so about like four to six hundred years ago regardless the light and clear aspects of the chaos rose up and became the sky while the heavy and murky aspects sank down and became the earth to prevent them from merging again pangu held the heaven and earth apart with his own body he did this for another eighteen thousand years during which he kept growing in height until the heaven and earth stretched ninety thousand leagues apart after this pangu died of exhaustion his breath became the wind and clouds his voice became thunder his left eye became the sun his right eye became the moon his limbs became the four directions his body became great mountains his blood became rivers his veins became roads his muscles became fertile land his hair became the stars his skin and body hairs became vegetation his teeth became precious metals his bones became hard stones his marrow became beautiful jade his sweat became dew and the fleas on his body became the many animals what's interesting about pangu is that he's actually a relative latecomer to chinese myth the earliest record of him is in the three kingdoms era that's only about 1800 years ago while most other figures of ancient chinese myth are many thousands of years older before him there was no widely accepted creation myth for the universe itself throughout china academic theories differ on where exactly pangu came from before i get into them though i gotta tell you about surf shark vpn the sponsor of this video while doing research for this video i once again ran into the problem of having very glitchy connections to chinese internet sources i don't know what kind of chinese governmental blacklist my ip is on or how it got there but i can't access most chinese websites unless i change my ip with a vpn thankfully surfshark makes this very easy all i have to do is click one button and those websites display normally to me again the best thing is that one surfshark account comes with unlimited installations so i can't be stopped anywhere it's available as a desktop program a browser extension and an app for my mobile devices even if you don't need to pull off ip changing shenanigans just to evade a governmental blacklist a vpn is still useful for accessing geo-restricted content not normally available to you you paid all that money for disney plus and they're still keeping certain shows or movies from you no problem just turn on surf shark vpn and you are no longer restricted you can use my code dao to get 83 off plus four extra months for free as a bonus the vpn connection encrypts your data to keep it private they have a 30 day money back policy so you have nothing to lose in deciding to try it out i'll put the link in the description below and back to pangu the creator giant a popular theory is that he evolved from the folk stories of southern chinese ethnic groups like the yao the hmong and the lee peoples in their folklore during the reign of an ancient king there once lived an old woman in his palace who had ear pain for three years after which a royal physician plucked a golden worm out of her ear that was about the size of a silkworm this worm was placed in a gourd and covered with a plate unexpectedly the worm turned into a dog with five colored fur it was named pauhu literally plategord after wear had emerged from the king loved this dog and always kept it at his side but the king had one major worry an enemy tribe was threatening his borders he declared that he would bestow a high ranking title lavish gifts and the hand of his youngest daughter in marriage to anyone who could bring back the head of this tribal leader the dog panhu then suddenly ran out of the palace and all the way to the enemy tribe's war camp the tribal leader happened to be throwing a party and was super drunk while he was passed out panhu bit off his head and brought it back to the king the king was beyond delighted but since panhu was just a dog all he gave panhu was a lot of meat to eat this made pamphlet sink into depression after several days the king mused that maybe panhu is mad at him for not fulfilling his promise to marry his daughter to the tribal leader's killer but it's not like dogs and humans can marry suddenly panhu spoke up telling the king to not worry about it and to just place him in a golden vessel for seven days and seven nights after which she would become human the king did this on the sixth day though the princess got worried that panuku may be starving in that vessel so she took a peek this was a mistake panhu's body had turned human but his head hadn't and it wouldn't change now so the princess had to marry him as he was with a dog hat on her own head this was the birth of furries i mean this was the birth of many southern tribes after the marriage panhu and the princess moved to the southern mountains to live as common folk they had three sons and three daughters who then intermarried and gave birth to several southern lineages don't make that face you know how common incest is in these myths stories there's more coming up don't worry anyway some scholars propose that the folklore of panuhu the doc king somehow evolved into pangu the creator of the universe though there's a lot of debate around this because the stories have basically nothing in common besides the similar names and their status as original stories kind of many other ethnic groups across china have different interpretations of what panhu did and what he looked like but him being the one to split the heaven and earth is what's widely accepted nowadays the next mythological figure commonly talked about after pangu is nua the creator goddess of humanity her upper body is human while her lower half is commonly depicted as that of a snakes after pangu separated the heaven and earth and his body became the vast landscape the goddess knew i walked around the mountains and rivers and trees but still felt like something was missing from the world when she crouched down near a pond or some say she crouched near the yellow river itself she saw her own reflection and realized what she needed to do she shaped the yellow mud on the bank in her own image then breathed life into it this became the first human excited by her creation nua sculpted more and more humans but eventually got tired of handcrafting every single one so she took a vine and with the mud every splatter became another human essentially mass producing them the humans she hand-made became the nobility while the mass-produced ones became the commoners watching humanity though nuan became worried that they would die out without her so she told them to pair up in male female pairs and create descendants themselves every second month she would hold the game festival near her temple during which young men and women will be free to marry among themselves with the grassy earth as their bed and the stars and moon as their canopy but this isn't nuan's only legend a long time after her creation of humanity a war broke out between the gods one particular battle ended with kung gong the god of water at the brink of defeat near the bujo mountain in the northwest of china furious and desperate gong gong smashed his head into boujou mountain shattering it in two and toppling the heavens half the sky collapsed and deep crevices fissured across the earth rain poured from the hole in the sky and black water spewed from the cracks in the earth creating raging floods that ravaged the lands mountains and forests caught on fire lighting the world blood red ferocious beasts attacked humanity fierce black birds dashed down from above and tore at the old and the young with their sharp claws heartbroken nuan collected many five-colored stones from the world's great rivers and smelted them into a sticky iridescent liquid she used this liquid to mend the hole in the sky this was the origin of beautiful clouds but she feared just mending the hole wouldn't be enough so she also killed a large world-sized tortoise and used one of its legs as a replacement pillar after that she slayed a black dragon that was terrorizing the central plains then burnt reeds into ash to dam the flood waters thus the carnage was over but since the turtle leg wasn't quite as tall as the other pillars the sun moon and stars slid west ever since creating the cycle of day and night also the giant rope that suspended the southeast corner of the earth had snapped during the drama making the lands there lower and causing rivers to flow east which makes perfect sense if you look at the geography of china nua was really the mvd alright most venerated deity common folklore doesn't usually talk of how she died but according to the classic of mountains and seas this ancient and mysterious book full of folklore after her death her intestines became 10 gods that are just hanging out before the song dynasty the 23rd day of every first month was the heaven piercing festival during which people would make many flatbreads and place them during which people would make many flatbreads and place them on their ceiling to imitate the mending of heaven why did this festival die out some scholars believe it's because salty male confusions have tried to systematically tear down nua's status as mother goddess throughout history it's commonly thought that nua represents the matriarchal system that early humans lived under before men realize they don't need to worship women they could just use violence to turn them into slaves of the patriarchy instead naturally after the patriarchy came into dominance the status of niwa contradicted the notion that men were supreme so supporters of the patriarchy has tried to change her legend to diminish her importance most notably they paired her up with a prominent ancient male god fushi claiming he was both her brother and her husband see i warned you that more incest was coming except if you look into their individual myths this makes no sense fushi's legend starts in the northwest where it's said that there was once a country called huashi that couldn't be reached by walking carriage or by boat you just could not go there okay it had no government no leader no greed no desires and its people lived long and happy lives they could walk into water without drowning walk into fire without burning and traverse the sky as if it were flat ground clouds and fog didn't block their sight and thunder and lightning didn't block their hearing one day a girl of huashu went east to the beautiful and lush thunder marsh and came across a giant footprint she stepped in it turns out the footprint was that of the thunder god who had a human head and a dragon's body she became pregnant for 12 years then gave birth to a son fushi who had a human head and a snake's body note here that snakes are considered lesser forms of dragons in chinese myth it's actually interesting that so many creation stories across the world involve snakes they're probably one of those things that freaked out our ancestors so much on a biological level that our ancestors had to attribute some sort of divinity to them also the whole deal with them shedding husks so they seem immortal what's the creation story in your culture does it involve snakes anyway fousey grew up to be a great tribal leader inventing many things that benefited his people by observing the clouds in the sky the rain the snow the thunder the lightning the winds and the birds and beasts he created the eight trigrams the yin yang and the five elements to explain the patterns of change in the natural world by observing how spiders made webs he invented fishing nets so his people would no longer have to catch fish by hand he also invented a writing system to replace keeping records by tying knots and he established marital rights that forbade people of the same ancestral house from marrying each other ending the era where people knew only of their mothers and not of their fathers niwa is said to have been his wife and invented a bunch of instruments with him but her legend very clearly states that she created humanity alone like she didn't need a man for that also if they're supposed to be brother and sister that goes against the marital rights that he established the whole arrangement is just sketchy what's sketchier is that there's another legend where fussy and nuan were supposedly the only survivors of a great flood as children after that they realized they had to repopulate the world but they also knew they were brother and sister so they were ashamed of it thus they asked the kevins for guidance first they each rolled a millstone down the mountain they proposed that if the gods approved of their copulation the millstone will land together then stories differ from here some say the millstones did land together naturally others say fusi that little rascal ran down the hill before nua and stacked the stones together himself then they may or may not have done a second divination where they each lit a fire on a different mountain if the plumes of smoke went straight up it was a sign that the gods disapproved of them if the plumes mixed together the gods approved the plumes of smoke did mix together finally nuan told fusi that if he could catch her then they could repopulate the earth she ran off and fussy chased her but when the chase got around to a big tree fussy caught her by suddenly changing direction and so he impregnated her except when she eventually gave birth it was to a grotesque mass of flesh instead of a baby horrified they cut it into tiny pieces and took them up the ladder of heaven in hopes of asking the gods what was up halfway up a great wind suddenly scattered the pieces of flesh across the earth and each piece became a person thus populating the earth once again this story just straight up does not fit with either nua or fusi's individual legend no it was likely appropriated from a flood myth of the yao and hmong people in that legend there was once a day where the sky was dense with rain clouds and thunder rumbled over the heavens scaring little children a man was working outside laying a bunch of moss over his roof to prevent the rain from wrecking his house his son and daughter watched him work then the three of them huddled in their house just as the rain came pouring down the rain pelted harder the wind blew fiercer and the thunder grew louder as if the thunder god himself was about to deal out his wrathful punishment the man sensing something bad was about to happen took a steel cage and a hunting spear and waited bravely outside with a flash of lightning and a roar like mountains cracking the asia faced thunder god flew down from the roof with an axe in hand meaty wings flapping on his back malevolent like glinting in his eyes the man hurried to stab the thunder god and lock it in the steel cage the next day the man went to the market to buy spices because he planned to butcher the thunder god and eat it before he left he told his children to never ever give the thunder god water but once the man was gone the thunder god pretended to cry and moan in pain asking for water the boy who was older insisted that their father forbade them from giving him water the thunder god asked for just a cup of water instead of a whole bowl but the boy refused him still the thunder god then asked for a few drops of water from the brush the family uses to scrub their walk the girl who was younger felt sympathy for his pain and pleaded on behalf of him saying nothing bad would happen with just a few drops of water so her brother relented as soon as the thunder god received the drops of water he told the kids to leave the house because he was about to burst out before he escaped back to the heavens he pulled out one of his teeth and told the kids to plant it in the earth and that one disaster happened they could escape in the fruit it would bear soon the dad came back with the spices and discovered in shock that the thunder god had escaped realizing that disaster was coming he hurried to buy supplies to build a steel boat meanwhile his kids planted the tooth which sprouted as soon as it was buried and bore fruit within the day by next morning the fruit had grown into a huge gourd the kids saw the gourd open and discovered that it was filled with teeth inside they plucked all the teeth out and found that the gourd shell was just big enough for two children to hide in on the third day the dad was just finishing up his steel boat when black winds started blowing everywhere wild rain poured from the night sky and groundwater burst from the earth and flooded the lands like trampling horses there was so much water it drowned the hills and engulfed the highest mountains the dad escaped in his boat and the kids escaped in their gourd eventually the waters flooded high enough to reach the heavens so the brave dad rode his boat to the heavenly gate demanding to be let in fearing his wrath the gods inside told the god of water to quell the flood the water then retreated instantly and the brave dad fell shattering with a seal boat on the ground however his children survived because their gourd bounced instead of breaking every other human in the world had died except for them though so the rest of the story is the exact same plot as the nuan fusi story it's pretty clear that their names just got slapped onto these two kids to justify the idea that they're a married couple and also siblings and this happened because people wanted to delegitimize nua's status as a female ruler in chinese history and myth there's this notion that there were three divine emperors in ancient times fusi and the divine farmer who i'll talk about in some other video are commonly cited as two out of the three emperors but people can't agree on who the third one is some list nua as the third some rank her above all three because her status as creator god is and others see her as beneath the three a lot of the controversy stems from how nuan and fuji are supposedly a couple if they reign together then it's not fair for them to both have a place among the three emperors so nua has to get kicked out so how did nuan fushi go from legendary rulers on equal footing to incestuous husband and wife well the earliest supposed mention of wushi having a wife is on an artifact called the true silk manuscript which was unearthed in 1943 by tomb roberts it was from a tomb of the true state dated approximately 2 300 years old this robe i'm wearing is actually a replica of a true artifact from around that time too like they sure had some good tomb sealing techniques the true silk manuscript is the oldest surviving record of a chinese creation myth and tells of how in the beginning of the world a creator god married a creator goddess and had four children together who became the four gods of time the four gods split the heaven and earth because they understood the principles of yin and yang then two other gods took command of the earth and made sure the stars would rise and fall in order and that she or life force would flow freely between the mountains and waters several thousand years later another god gave birth to the sun and moon so they didn't have those before that and thus brought peace to the lands and mountains the four time gods created the sky dome made its spin and reinforced it with the essence of five-colored wood the flame emperor sent his assistant drurong the god of fire to rule with the four gods so the people revere the gods and didn't dare offend them later gong gong the god of water you know that guy who like smashed his head into the pillar created the calendar making every 10 days into a week and splitting every day into night dusk day and dawn this creation myth is unique to this manuscript so we don't know how widespread the story is but it does suggest that at least in this region of this era the creation myth did tell of like two people doing the creation instead of one singular mother goddess but also a lot of the characters on it can no longer be read so the creator gods being fushi and yua is just one interpretation this manuscript has also been on a journey okay after the grave robbers dug it up it was purchased by the chinese collector tai chi chiang who studied it while fleeing the japanese invasion in world war ii during which he lost his wife and a daughter after the war an american proto-cia agent called john hadley cox tricked him into handing it over and smuggled it to america tai chi zhang tried to get it back for 30 years but it was eventually sold to famous art patron arthur sackler for five hundred thousand dollars so now this oldest record of a chinese creation myth resides in the arthur m sackler gallery in washington dc just like many other looted chinese artifacts i have a whole thread of them on twitter if you want to see but since sackler was uncertain about how it ended up in america he'd never put it on display still give it back america give it back that's not yours anyway nuan and fusi started getting definitively depicted as a couple several hundred years later in the han dynasty it's worth noting that this era had a lot of instances of powerful empresses and concubines taking control of the court this stressed out the male confusion officials to no end so there was a distinct rise in anti-female independence propaganda in this era but no matter how many new paintings you make you can't just erase a legend that has been passed down through generations for thousands of years the tales of nua hand-sculpting humanity and then saving us from the great flood by her damn self have persisted to this day as some of the most famous and important chinese folklore despite the two thousand years of attempts to delegitimize her after the reign of wuzatian the only female emperor in chinese history confucian scholars would list nua and wizatin together as examples of females being in the supreme position which is highly unnatural and must be avoided then if i was losing 10 i'd be so flattered like you had to reach all the way to the creator goddess to insult me by the ting dynasty the last one certain scholars tried to do mental gymnastics to claim that nua was a male god all along but nobody took this seriously even though they tried to make like male statues of her nua would always be the mother goddess of chinese people and misogynists would just have to deal with it anyway that was a glimpse into china's ancient creation stories i gotta remind you all that chinese mythology or chinese folk religion doesn't really have an organized standardized doctrine so details differ all over the place in different tellings for this video i relied on my existing cultural knowledge the book jongwoo transfer by the scholar bienko and the first volume of the tushuo tianjia chinese history series which is also written by two scholars unfortunately these books are only available in chinese and i don't have any recommendations for books in english because i don't read books about chinese myth and history in english not being able to see the actual characters for the names just bothers me too much if you want more english stories that riff on chinese myth though especially one with major percy jackson vibes i'm so excited to say that the cover for my middle grade novel has been revealed it's called zachary yin and the dragon emperor and is now available for pre-order at zacharygun.com it's like yu-gi-oh meets percy jackson about a chinese-american boy who gets compelled to go on an adventure across china after the spirit of the first emperor possesses his ar gaming headset he has to defeat many figures from history and myth in order to heist real artifacts and save his mom's soul it comes out may 3rd 2022 which is oh my god not even that far away where does it time go if you want something to read right now though my debut novel iron widow is out in bookstores everywhere it's been on the new york times bestseller list for seven weeks straight what you can also support me in making more of these videos about chinese history and myth by joining my patreon or tipping me on kofi shout outs to my patreon guardian lions benji sudokin cooper malamute curious mad cat durian dude out of spite eduardo aguirre aaron jacob person jose valeskis kakuga kite's universe molly mcallister nick health and robin karates dar magazine and another thanks to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video with their help i will see you next time

Channel: Xiran Jay Zhao

Views: 379,614

Keywords: chinese myth, chinese mythology, Nüwa, pangu, fuxi, chinese culture, chu silk manuscript

Id: HI0a6OzcQ18

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021