The Gods That Created Chinese Civilization EXPLAINED

The universe, even today, represents a profound enigma to humankind. How did we go from a vast void to a planet that can support life, to ultimately civilizations that sprung up across the four corners of the earth from Egypt to Rome to China? Who solved the problem of how to stay alive on this planet? Who fought battles, tasted glory, but restrained themselves with morals and went on to create culture, arts and music, and the vast tapestry that is human history? Well, every culture has a creation myth, and then a set of pioneers who brought knowledge to humankind and kickstarted their history. And China is no exception to that. They're a group of what are now called gods that taught humans all they needed to know to survive and create their culture at the very beginning of Chinese history, around 5,000 years ago. And in this video, we're going to go through all of them. This is The Gods That Created Chinese Civilization Explained. So first of all, how was the world created in Chinese culture? Well, in a pretty similar way to the world being created out of nothing in Genesis in the Bible, the world is created out of a void in Chinese culture. But that's where the similarity ends. The Tao Te Ching by the founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, contains this description in passage 42 of the book. The Tao gives birth to the one. That's Taoist philosophy hidden in a Jet Li movie right there. The one gives birth to two. I would say two refers to yin and yang, the polarity, so hot and cold, male and female, etc. The two give birth to the three. Well, two people together can give birth to a third, right? Like a man and a woman having a baby. Humans also exist in a third state where they have that yin and yang duality within them, but are neither fully yin or fully yang. Also, out of yin and yang, which can be represented by a broken or unbroken line, we get the trigrams of the Book of Changes, or yi jing, of which there are eight combinations. Out of three come 10,000 things. So out of the third state produced by the interplay between yin and yang come 10,000 things. And 10,000 just means everything in the world, just a very big number. If we think in terms of trigrams, they can be combined together into hexagrams, of which there are eight times eight, or 64. And this forms the basis of the Book of Changes, with these hexagrams being able to supposedly represent any state or change of state that can exist in the world. The first hexagram, qian, represents heaven, and the second one, kun, represents earth. So together, they make up the word for universe or cosmos in Chinese, qian kun. And then the Tao Te Ching goes on to talk about how all beings bear the yin and embrace the yang, i.e. they both suffer and have blessings, and exhaust their qi, or energy, to achieve harmony. The Chinese people viewed the earth as being square, and the heavens as being a round dome over the earth. This is reflected in the ancient saying, tian yuan di fang, heaven is round, earth is square. That's why when you look at the wooden railings in Chinese and Asian temples, the lower railing is square and the upper is round. They represent the heaven and the earth. And actually, the word for place in Chinese is di fang, the second part of that saying, which literally means earth square. So anyway, from that account, we have the heaven and the earth, and the ten thousand things emerging out of a void, with no creator involved. But that's not the only account. There is a myth of a god who created the universe, or more accurately, became the universe, and that is the myth of Pangu. He is often portrayed as a hairy man with horns. Here's an AI improvement to that, I'm sure it's totally accurate. And they give him an axe, which he is said to have split open heaven and earth with. The thing about this though, is that it was first written about in the three kingdoms period, and there's no record of the story of Pangu being passed down earlier than that. But let's take a look at what it actually says in the original story. The universe was in a state of primeval chaos, with heaven and earth squished together like an egg. And out of that, Pangu was born. The Chinese really love stories of things popping out of eggs, don't they? Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it then came a stone monkey. The nature of monkey was irrepressible. Well, that's a different story. Let's keep going. It took 18,000 years for heaven and earth to separate. The light positive side became the heavens, and the turbid and negative side became the earth. Pangu was in the middle. He went through nine transformations a day. He was holier than heaven, and wiser than earth. Every day the heavens rose one zhang, which is 10 feet higher, and the earth got 10 feet thicker. Pangu also grew 10 feet. Through this process lasting 18,000 years, the heavens reached their full height, and the earth reached its full depth. And Pangu was fully grown. It was 90,000 li from the heavens to the earth, and after this there would be three sovereigns. We will get to the three sovereigns a bit later, that's actually quite important. But first let's talk about the distances. One li is half a kilometer, so that's 45,000 kilometers or 28,000 miles between heaven and earth. But then it goes on to talk about how when Pangu died, his body became the geographical features of the earth. First born Pangu, when he died, his body transformed. His breath became the wind and clouds. His voice became thunder. His left eye became the sun, and right eye became the moon. His four limbs and five extremities of his body became the four directions and five peaks. His blood became rivers. His tendons and veins became the interior of the earth. His muscles became fields. You get the idea, it goes on for quite some time. But then the last thing it says is that the little mites on his body became black-haired people. Okay, first thing I'm thinking is why does he have mites? Were there issues with his daily hygiene routine? But then I remembered that he looks like this. So yeah, bound to be a few mites in there, and they became the Chinese people. Kind of racist, don't you think? Although they wrote this themselves, so you can't really say that. Anyway, that part isn't normally emphasized. People normally just view him as becoming the physical universe and physical world. Now after the era of Pangu, we get to very early Chinese history. You couldn't really call it history, it's mythology basically. And we have the three sovereigns or San Huang that were talked about in the passage about Pangu that we just read. Now there are different sets of these three sovereigns, but let's go with one of the more common ones from a Han dynasty text called Feng Su Tong Yi. The first sovereign would be Nu Wa. Now she is a goddess that appears much earlier in classical texts than the accounts of Pangu. She's actually in the Shan Hai Jing or Classic of Mountains and Seas. But if we fit this into the whole story with Pangu, it would go that Pangu first became the world, and then there is the idea that it was some battle in the heavens between gods and demons which left heaven and earth in tatters. And then we have a story which originates in the writings of the Huai Nan masters, Huai Nan Zi from 139 BC, that it was Nu Wa who fixed the heavens and the earth. In an earlier time, the four pillars were in tatters. These were the pillars that held up the heavens. The nine provinces broken. Heaven did not completely cover the earth, and the earth did not completely hold up heaven. Fires burned and were not extinguished. Water flooded the land and would not recede. Fierce animals ate innocent people. Birds of prey snatched the old and weak. Thus Nu Wa smelted five colored stones to patch up the sky. She snapped the legs off a turtle to make pillars to hold up heaven. Five colored stones, eh? Is that where Marvel's getting their ideas from these days? So that's the idea anyway of her fixing up heaven and earth. The quote is quite a bit longer than that with all these different things that she did, but you get the idea. Then in another text, the Feng Su Tong Yi from the Han dynasty, we have a quote about how Nu Wa actually made people. Now this book originally had 30 chapters, but only 10 remain, and even they were reconstructed. But there are quotes from the remaining 20 chapters in other books. So this one is one of those quotes that were scattered in other texts and can be found in the Tai Ping Yu Lan from the Song dynasty after 900 AD. It is said that when heaven and earth opened up, there were no people yet. Nu Wa clumped together yellow earth and made people. She put in tremendous effort with no time for leisure. She dipped a rope in the mud and flung it across the earth, and drops of mud became people. Those with riches and honor were the people made with yellow earth, and those who were poor and ordinary were made with mud. It's kind of interesting to me that this method of making humans out of earth is the same as how the Christian God did it in Genesis. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Two cultures thousands of miles away came up with the exact same thing, even though they had no contact with each other. It really makes you think about there being truth to these myths. Well I guess there could still be some doubt about that because the only versions we have today are quoted in later texts, but they in theory come from that very early text. But anyway, let's keep going. Now Nuwa has a brother who was the second of the three sovereigns, and that was Fuxi. So Fuxi is the brother of Nuwa, but he is also her husband. Yes, it seems that didn't really matter at that time, or maybe because they're gods it doesn't matter. Also both Nuwa and Fuxi are often depicted with the lower body of a snake. Remember, these gods have lots of transformations, so maybe they didn't look like that all the time. Anyway, once Nuwa created humans, Fuxi is a bringer of culture. Commentaries on the Book of Changes or Yijing credit Fuxi as being the one who created the eight trigrams. In ancient times, Baoxi, which is another name for Fuxi, was a king ruling all under heaven. He looked up and observed the sky, looked down and observed the earth. He observed the markings on birds and animals and favorable features of the land. He drew from his own body and external objects and thus created the eight trigrams in order to communicate with divine intelligence and classify the relationships between the ten thousand things. And the ten thousand things just means all the things on earth. Now the eight trigrams represent the eight fundamental building blocks of the physical world. Heaven, earth, water, fire, thunder, wind, mountains and lakes. You can look at the eight trigrams and then the 64 hexagrams that they combine into as kind of a source code for the world that the gods created, containing in them every possible type of occurrence that could happen, like the code of the matrix. Once you've mastered it, you have total freedom. The quote goes on to talk about Fuxi teaching humankind how to live. He tied ropes together to make nets to use for hunting and fishing. Other texts also say that he created music and then he became a country music icon. And in addition to that, he apparently also created cooking. And together, Fuxi and Nuwa created the institution of marriage. Just later generations decided it would be best not to marry your sister. Cladish, you are the most wonderful husband and son I ever had. Or any relative for that matter. With Fuxi, I really get the sense that he was someone that the gods sent down to give the Chinese people a kickstart in the world that they had created. Like if you just created the matrix, you'd have to teach people the basics of surviving within that world. Well, I wouldn't really call that basic. I was thinking more like showing humans which plants were safe to eat so they didn't kill themselves in the process of discovery. And that brings us to the next of the three sovereigns. Shen Nong. So Shen Nong literally means the divine farmer. This is what he looked like. Pretty similar to Pangu, actually. And here's an AI version. Yeah, he didn't have free arms. It's AI, guys. What can you do? So his inventions and contributions to humankind's knowledge were all to do with agriculture. Hunting, what Fuxi taught, is kind of like the first stage of survival, the hunter-gatherer. And organized agriculture is the next stage. This is recorded in the commentaries to the Yijing. Shen Nong chopped wood to make plows and hoes. These tools were beneficial and he taught it to all under heaven. But he did even more than that. The Huainanzi states, in ancient times, people ate plants and drank water from rivers and picked the fruits from trees. They ate the meat from shellfish and crickets. They often suffered from illness due to poisoning. Thus Shen Nong started teaching people about the five grains. And these five grains, by the way, are soybeans, wheat, prozo millet, foxtail millet, and hemp. Although some lists replace hemp with rice. He taught about quality of soil, which were dry or wet, fertile or barren, highland or lowland. He tasted flavors of hundreds of plants and tasted water from springs to see if it was sweet or bitter. And he let people know what to avoid. At the time, he himself suffered from poisoning 70 times in one day. So the idea is that he was a higher being that came to the world, ruled his clan as a king, and taught people all they needed to know to stay alive from a nutritional and agricultural perspective. He was able to taste all the plants for them and endure the poisoning, because he had the body of a god, in order to give them the knowledge that they needed for nutrition and medicinal herbs. He also taught people to set up farmer's markets in the middle of the day, where people could come and exchange goods through barter. So Shen Nong is the last of the three sovereigns. This set of gods really gave people the very basics, okay? Marriage, farming, hunting, trade through barter, etc. But next we get to the real grandfather of Chinese civilization, the Yellow Emperor. So in addition to the three sovereigns, we also have the five emperors. And they are often grouped together, okay? So people say San Huang Wu Di, in talking about the early culture bearers and sage rulers of China, who are all now deified into gods. Now the Yellow Emperor, or Huang Di, as he is called in Chinese, is normally listed as the first of the five emperors. And he is the one who unified China, even before the first emperor. He is like the prequel of prequels, like the Phantom Menace, but without the annoying Jar Jar Binks. The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now get out of here. No, no, mister stay. Mister called Jar Jar Binks. And the Shi Ji, or the Records of the Grand Historian, opens with the myth of the Yellow Emperor. In the time of the Yellow Emperor, Shen Nong's clan had declined. The feudal lords were attacking each other and treating common people with cruelty, and Shen Nong's clan could not attack them. Thus, the Yellow Emperor trained in weapons and attacked them for not respecting the hierarchy. The feudal lords all came to pay their respects. But not all of them did this. There were a few holdouts, and the Yellow Emperor had to first fight the Flame Emperor, or Yan Di, who some say is the same person as Shen Nong, and they also say that it was the Yellow Emperor's brother. I don't know about that. You know, maybe it was Shen Nong. Maybe people lived for hundreds of years at that time, or maybe it was just another leader of Shen Nong's clan. But anyway, he defeats him, and then the Yellow Emperor had to fight Chiyou, who is actually another culture pioneer. He supposedly created metalworking and weapons. Here is a beautiful picture of the guy. Looks like a friendly chap. So he defeats Chiyou as well, and unifies all of China under him. This is supposed to have occurred somewhere around 2700 BC, and later generations venerate the Yellow Emperor as a god. And some modern scholars say that he was an alien. According to ancient Chinese legends, the Yellow Emperor was floating through space. He saw that the people of Earth were sad and poor. Guys, I do have another video on the Yellow Emperor and his incredible backstory and the likelihood that he was an alien. It looks like this. I will put it on the end screen of this video for you to check out. Now, after the Yellow Emperor, we then have the flood myth, which exists in Western culture too. And then a few hundred years after that, we start getting into actual verifiable history. But what we saw in this video were the mythical beings that started China's 5000 years of culture. All right, guys, that's where I'm going to leave it today. 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