Five thousand years of Chinese history stories

Author: Yin Hongqing
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-10-01
Features: "The Creation of Heaven and Earth" refers to the ancient times when heaven and earth were not yet separated. The universe was like a chaotic, egg-like mass. The ancestors of humanity, Pangu, was nurtured and grew within this egg, sleeping soundly for 18,000 years. One day, Pangu suddenly awoke. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but a pitch-black void, suffocating and unsettling.
Furious at this situation, he grabbed a great axe from somewhere and struck the darkness with immense force. With a deafening sound like mountains and earth shattering, the egg burst open. The lighter, clearer substances rose to become heaven, while the heavier, turbid substances sank to become earth. Thus, the once indistinguishable chaos of heaven and earth was separated by Pangu's axe.
After the separation, Pangu feared they might merge again. So, he held up heaven with his head and stomped on the earth with his feet, standing at the center of the cosmos, changing with it. Every day, heaven rose ten feet higher, and earth grew ten feet thicker, while Pangu's body increased by twenty feet each day. This continued for another 18,000 years. Heaven soared to great heights, earth became exceptionally thick, and Pangu's body grew immensely long. His height was said to be ninety thousand li—a towering giant like a pillar, holding up heaven and earth.
After countless more years, the structure of heaven and earth seemed stable enough that they would no longer merge. It was time for Pangu to rest, and he finally collapsed and died.
At the moment of his death, tremendous transformations occurred. The breath he exhaled became wind and clouds, his voice turned into thunder, his left eye became the sun, and his right eye became the moon. His limbs and body turned into the four poles and famous mountains of the earth, his blood into rivers and lakes, his veins into roads, his muscles into fertile fields, his hair and beard into stars, his skin and hair into flowers and trees, and even his sweat into rain and sweet dew. In short, Pangu's "transformation upon death" created everything in the beautiful world.
However, when Pangu first separated heaven and earth, there were flaws—large holes remained in the sky. At this time, a goddess named Nuwa melted many colorful stones to repair the heavens. Later, a hero named Gonggong, in a struggle for the throne with another deity named Zhuanxu, crashed into the pillar holding up the sky in a fit of rage. The pillar was shattered, and a corner of the earth collapsed, though Gonggong himself survived.
From then on, the sky in the northwest tilted slightly, and the ground there rose accordingly, causing the sun, moon, and stars to drift toward the northwest. Meanwhile, the southeast sank, creating a lower elevation, so the rivers and lakes flowed endlessly toward the southeast.