Yan Di,炎帝,

Yan Di, was leader of tribe with first name Jiang, and the tribe also known as Shennong tribe, it means they are professional at agriculture. It was say, Yan Di very smart when he was still a boy, and he do a lot of good things to people. Yan Di invent some farmer instrument and teach people about planting crops. To heal diease, he find many herbs and was seemed as the beginner of Chinese Traditional Medical and Medicine. He made musical instruments with five string, and enable people know etiquette.

First, Shengnong tribe living in ShanXi province, but they moved to east and conflict with another tribe, Huang Di, and they two become Chinese's ancestor. it's another story.

Yan Di made great contribution on agriculture, medical, so he was deemed as a great hero in the begin time of Chinese culture. Now, Chinese people allways says, "we are son of Yan and Huang", here Yan means Yan Di. And Yan Di also was deemed as one of the three great hero of Chinese along with Fu xi and Huang Di.


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Fuxi--- Creator of Trigrams Symbols

Fuxi, also Fu Hsi( 伏羲, 庖牺, 庖犧) is the legendary god in the mythology of ancient China. He is also called Taihao(太昊) or Taihao Fuxi. He was born in TianShui, GanSu province, and has a snake tails like his sister "Nv wa"



Legend says, by imitating the spider, he created a net to catch fish and animals. He invented the musical instrument, Se, a plucked instrument with 50 strings, and constituted the Eight Diagrams used in divination. He married his younger sister, Nv wa, and started the reproduction of offspring one generation after another. Thus they became the ancestors of the Chinese.






Fuxi and Nv wa (portrait found in old tomb in AShiNa XinJiang province)

It was say, one day, a dragon horse emerged from the Yellow River, Fuxi invented "He Tu"(means River Picture) according to marks on its back. Then Fuxi invented the arrangement of the Trigrams (八卦 bāgùa). Because "He Tu" and Trigrams was seemed as a very important core part of Chinese culture, so Fuxi was seemed as the beginner of Chinese culture.



Dragon Horse(loong ma 龙马)




River Picture(He Tu, 河图)



In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220), Fu xi and Nv wa were carved on stone as figures with both human heads and bodies of the snake. They are human-shaped from the waist up, but are snake-like below. The lower bodies are entangled together with each other.

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Nv Wa, Patches up the Sky(女娲补天)

Nv Wa(sometimes Nv Kua) was a female godess in Chinese lengend, she has a snake tails. and she was the creator of mankind.

After Pangu create the world, the earth was a beautiful place with blossoming trees and flowers, and full of animals, birds, fish and all living creatures. But as Nv Wa wandered about it Nv Wa felt very lonely. She pick up a handful of yellow clay near Yellow River, mixed it with water and molded a figure in her likeness. As she blowing to it, the figure came alive -the first human being. Nv Wa was so pleased with her creation that she went on making more figures both men and women. They danced around her cheerily and loneliness was dispelled.

Nv Wa is defined in China earliest dictionary by the philologist Xu Shen ( c.58-147) as being " in charge of breeding of all living things", so possibly her origin is associated with fertility.

Nv Wa was the sister and then the wife of Fu Xi, the legendary ruler who was credited with teaching man to domesticate animals and to have taught people matrimony.

Second, Nv Wa patched up the sky.

Two deities, called in Gong Gong, the God of Water and Zhu Rong, the God of Fire, were in battle. They fought all the way from heaven to earth, causing turmoil everywhere. The God of Fire won, and in anger the God of Water struck his head against Buzhou Mountain (a mythical peak supposed to be northwest of the Kunlun range in southern Xinjiang ). The mountain collapsed and down came the big pillar that held heaven from earth. Half the sky fell in, leaving a big black hole. The earth cracked open, forests went up in flames, floodwaters sprouted from beneath the earth and dragons, snakes and fierce animals leaped out at the people. Many people were drowned and more were burned or devoured. It was an unprecedented disaster.

Nv Wa was grieved that mankind which she had created undergo such suffering. She decided to mend the sky and end this catastrophe. She melted together five colored stones and with the molten mixture patched up the sky. Then she killed a giant turtle and used its four legs as four pillars to support the fallen part of the sky. She caught and killed a dragon and scared other beasts away. The she gathered and burned a huge quantity of reeds and with the ashes stopped the flood from spreading, so that the people could live happily again.

After disaster, the sky slanted to the northwest and the earth to the southeast, so since then, the sun, the moon and all the stars turn towards the west and all the rivers run southeast.

So Nv Wa was deemed as the mother of mankind, specially, the mother of Chinese.



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Pangu, Creator of the world(盘古开天地)

Pangu(盘古), also known as PunkGod in English. In Chinese legend, Pangu created the world by separating the initail formless chaos gas into the sky and the earth, the sky is Yan(阳).

It was said, in the beginning, the universe was like an egg and there was only formless chaos in the egg.

Pangu sleeping in the egg for over 18,000 years. Then one day, he woke up and cracked the egg into pieces. By separating the heavy and light parts of the egg, he created the sky and the earth. Pangu stood on the earth and held up the sky using his hands, and then he had grown with the sky until the form of the world for another 18,000 years. The distance from Earth and Sky at the end of the 18,000 years would have been 65,700,000 feet, or over 12,443 miles.

After that, Pangu died(or rest), and his body become part of the earth, says his breath became the wind; his voice the thunder; eyes become the sun and moon; his body became the mountains; his blood formed rivers; his muscles the fertile lands; his hair the stars and milky road; his fur the bushes and forests; his bones the valuable minerals; his bone marrows sacred diamonds; his sweat fell as rain.


So Chinese think Pangu as the creator of the universe, and the earlyest, strongest god, and the father of civilization.

The lengend of Pangu was first come out at Three Kingdoms (三國) period(about 220AD).



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