Knowra Chinese creation myths Chinese creation myths Traditional Chinese narratives explain how the world, humanity, and cosmic order began. They include accounts of cosmic separation, divine creation, and culture heroes who shaped the inhabited world.
Pangu : A primordial giant in Chinese mythology whose body becomes features of the world after his death. His transformation supplies the most familiar Chinese account of how the cosmos took shape.
Chu Ci : An anthology of early Chinese poetry associated especially with the southern state of Chu. Its mythic poems preserve southern traditions about gods, cosmic travel, and the world's beginnings.
Yin and yang : A Chinese cosmological framework describing interdependent, complementary forces whose interactions generate change. Several creation accounts explain the ordered world through the differentiation of yin and yang.
Fuxi : A culture hero in Chinese tradition associated with the trigrams, hunting, and the beginnings of civilization. His legends extend cosmic origins into accounts of how human society acquired knowledge and institutions.
Nüwa : A creator goddess in Chinese mythology credited with forming humans and repairing the sky. Her stories explain humanity's making and the restoration of a damaged cosmos.
Shanhaijing : The Chinese title of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, an ancient compilation of myths and geography. This textual tradition is a major source for early mythic figures and cosmic landscapes.
Hundun : A Chinese mythic and philosophical image of undifferentiated chaos or primordial wholeness. It represents the unformed condition from which some traditions imagine an ordered cosmos emerging.
Nuwa patches the sky : A Chinese myth in which Nüwa repairs the sky after cosmic catastrophe and restores order. The episode makes cosmic maintenance, not only creation, central to the world's origin story.
Shangdi : A high deity in ancient Chinese religion, especially prominent in Shang dynasty inscriptions and Zhou texts. Some early accounts assign creation to a supreme deity rather than a transforming giant.
Han dynasty : A Chinese imperial dynasty lasting from 206 BCE to 220 CE, with a brief interruption by the Xin dynasty. Han-era writers systematized older cosmologies and transmitted creation accounts in influential compilations.
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