Nv Wa Patches up the Sky

A nearly female figure in Chinese mythology is the goddess Nu Wa (sometimes Nu Kua). According to one legend it was she who was the creator of mankind. The earth was a beautiful place with blossoming trees and flowers, and full of animals, birds, fish and all living creatures. But as she wandered about it Nu Wa felt very lonely. She bent down and took up a handful of earth, mixed it with water and molded a figure in her likeness. As she kneaded it the figure came alive -the first human being. Nu 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. Nu Wa is defined in China's 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. In some versions of the legend Nu Wa is said to have been both the sister and the wife of Fu Xi, the legendary ruler who was credited with teaching man to domesticate animals and to have taught people matrimony. Nu Wa and Fu Xi were pictured as having snake like tails interlocked, with a child between them in an Eastern Han dynasty ( A. D. 25-220) mural in the Wu-liang Temple in Jiaxiang county, Shandong province. She was credited with, among other things, the invention of the sheng reed pipes. Another legend tells how she patched up the sky. Two deities, called in one version 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. Nu Wa was grieved that mankind which she had created should undergo such suffering. She decided to mend the sky and end this catastrophe. She melted together various kinds of 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 this scared the 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. The only trace left of the disaster, the legend says, was that the sky slanted to the northwest and the earth to the southeast, and so, since then, the sun, the moon and all the stars turn towards the west and all the rivers run southeast.