Where were Chinese ancestors from? Legend
has it that a long long time ago, The Heaven and the Earth were a chaotic gathering
of air massed, just like an egg. A man named Pangu axed the Heaven off from the
Earth with a huge axe. Standing right between, hands holding out the sky, feet stamping
on the ground, he grew taller and taller, hence the sky became higher and higher
while the ground became lower and lower. This lasted for 18,000 years. As a result,
the Heaven and the Earth were finally driven away from each other to a vast distance
of 90,000 miles and Pangu became a giant with his head holding up the heaven and
his feet stamping on the ground. After his death, his eyes became the sun and the
moon, his four limbs, the mountains, blood, rivers, lakes and seas, his sinews,
the field, his arteries, the roads and ways, his hairs and moustaches, the stars
in the sky, his skin and body hairs, flowers, grass and woods, his teeth and bones,
the shining metals, hard stones, glittering pearls and precious stones, his sweats,
the dews. What is miraculous is that many of the small insects on his body became
human beings. This is the legend of Pangu creating the new Heaven and the Earth.
This myth has been passed on generation after generation until now in China.
Besides Pangu's myth, many more myths were created by Chinese ancestors by their
imagination. For instance, the legend of Youchaoshi who taught people how to make
houses on the branches of trees; Suirenshi who taught people how to make fire with
wood out of chiseling; Fuxishi who taught people to hunt and invented Eight Trigrams
(eight combinations of three whole or broken lines formerly used in divination);
Shennongshi who grew foods and looked for medicine herbs by tasting more than a
hundred kinds of herbs and grasses. All of them are the embodiment of the wisdom
of ancient conscientious Chinese, the epitome of the invincible Chinese who tranformed
and conquered nature.
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