Nuwa Creates Humanity and Mends the Sky

After Fuxi, Nuwa Takes His Place

In the last episode, Fuxi taught people how to read the world.

He taught them to weave nets, observe the patterns of Heaven and Earth, and slowly turn scattered life into something with rules. But after Fuxi died, the tribal alliance could not be left without a leader.

The one who took his place was Nuwa.

When people speak of Nuwa, they usually remember two stories first: she creates humanity, and she mends the sky. But in the oldest imagination, she is not just a gentle mother goddess, and not simply a figure standing beside Fuxi.

Her place in the ancient story is much larger than that.

When the sky collapses, she can repair it.

When humanity disappears, she can bring it back.

When order falls apart, she can gather it together again.

This episode begins with Nuwa taking over after Fuxi.

When the Flood Came, Only Fuxi and Nuwa Remained

There are many versions of how Fuxi and Nuwa became connected.

One of the most famous begins with a great flood.

This is not a local river rising after heavy rain. In the myth, the flood swallows the whole world. Tribes disappear. Houses disappear. Human beings disappear. In the end, only Fuxi and Nuwa remain, running hand in hand toward the high mountains.

When they reach the summit and look back, everything below them is water.

Between Heaven and Earth, it seems that only the two of them are left.

Then the unavoidable question arrives.

If they do not unite, humanity will disappear forever.

But in many traditions, Fuxi and Nuwa are remembered as brother and sister. To begin the human world again, they have to cross a line that makes Nuwa deeply uneasy.

So she refuses to let the matter be decided by Fuxi alone, or by herself alone.

Heaven must decide.

Three Tests of Heaven's Will

The first test is smoke.

Fuxi stands on one mountain. Nuwa stands on another. Each lights a fire. If the smoke from both fires rises and joins together in the air, that will mean Heaven agrees.

The smoke joins.

Nuwa still is not satisfied.

So they try again.

The second test uses stone mill wheels. Each pushes a millstone down from a mountain. If the two stones meet below, Heaven will be giving the same answer a second time.

They meet.

Nuwa still does not quite accept it.

So there is a third test.

She runs in front, and Fuxi chases after her. Nuwa circles around a tree. After a while, Fuxi realizes that if he keeps chasing in circles, he will never catch her. So he stops and waits in one place.

Nuwa comes around the tree and runs straight into his arms.

Three trials have all passed.

At that point, Nuwa has nothing left to say.

In the language of myth, Heaven has spoken.

A Ball of Flesh Falls to the Ground, and Humanity Returns

After Fuxi and Nuwa unite, Nuwa becomes pregnant.

But what she gives birth to is not an ordinary child.

It is a great ball of flesh.

Nuwa is alarmed. She has already worried that a union between the two of them may be improper, and now this strange birth seems to confirm her fear.

Fuxi, however, does not panic.

He draws his sword and cuts the flesh apart. Blood and fragments scatter in every direction. Wherever they land, human beings appear.

These new people stand up and bow before Fuxi and Nuwa.

That is why, in this version of the story, Fuxi and Nuwa become the ancestors of humanity.

The scene sounds bizarre, but the meaning is very clear. After a world-ending disaster, human beings do not simply come back on their own. The ancestors must bring them back into the world.

Nuwa Does Not Only Succeed Fuxi. She Also Helps Shape Marriage

Nuwa's story is not only about creating people. It is also about how people begin to live together under rules.

The flood-and-siblings story is not the only version of her relationship with Fuxi.

Another, more grounded version says that after Fuxi rose to fame, many female tribal leaders wanted to unite with him. But the one he chose in the end was Nuwa.

After the two of them came together, the tribe grew stronger.

And the rules of marriage were not treated as Fuxi's work alone. Nuwa had weight in them too.

Together, they helped move relations between men and women from loose encounters toward regulated marriage.

There should be a formal union.

There should be a matchmaker.

The man should bring a betrothal gift.

Once those rules are established, everything changes. In the older world, a man might come to a woman's household and leave by morning, and the father of a child might remain unclear. Now relationships are fixed, households are more stable, and men must carry responsibility.

So this episode is not only asking where human beings came from.

It is also asking how people first began to have families, marriage, and more stable social ties.

Gonggong Refuses to Accept Nuwa's Power

By the time Nuwa succeeds Fuxi, she is no longer a young girl in the story.

She is the leader of the tribal alliance after Fuxi. She has prestige, authority, and roots among the tribes.

But not everyone accepts her.

One rival is Gonggong.

He is also a tribal leader, and he refuses to accept Nuwa's position. In the story, the conflict is not only political. It also carries the tension of a man unwilling to submit to a woman placed above him.

War breaks out.

Nuwa wins.

Gonggong loses.

But Gonggong cannot accept defeat. In anger, he destroys the altar where the tribes offer sacrifice to Heaven, and the place where they observe the signs of the sky. As the story grows more mythic over time, this becomes the famous image of Gonggong crashing into Mount Buzhou.

What is Mount Buzhou?

It is the pillar that holds up the sky.

Once it is struck, disaster follows.

The sky collapses.

The earth tilts.

The flood returns.

The world that had only just been restored falls into chaos again.

Nuwa Mends the Sky and Saves the World Again

Once the sky breaks, the disaster is no longer the problem of one tribe.

Heaven tilts toward the northwest. The earth sinks toward the southeast. Floodwater spreads everywhere. The world that had only just become stable is thrown back into disorder.

Nuwa steps forward again.

She melts five-colored stones and uses them to mend the sky.

The sky is repaired. The waters calm. The world slowly becomes stable again.

Nuwa mending the sky can sound like a mythic spectacle, but inside the story its meaning is simple.

When the world breaks, someone has to repair it.

That someone is Nuwa.

Earlier, she brought humanity back into the world.

Now she saves the world so humanity can go on living in it.

Nuwa Creates Humanity Once Again

After the sky is mended, the world is stable, but there are still too few people.

Nuwa looks at the yellow earth and comes up with another way.

She begins to shape people out of clay.

At first, she makes them one by one with her own hands, shaping them in her own image. She sets them down, and they come alive and bow before her.

But after a while she realizes that this is too slow.

So she takes a rope or grass cord, dips it into yellow mud, and swings it through the air. Wherever the drops land, human beings rise up.

From there, the world becomes crowded again.

Later people add another explanation to the story: the people shaped by hand become the wealthy or noble, while those made from the splashed mud become ordinary commoners.

That explanation is, of course, just an old way of telling the story.

But it does make the myth feel more complete. It answers where people came from, where surnames and lineages came from, and even how ancient people tried to explain differences of status.

Nuwa Does More Than Create Humans

Nuwa lives a long time.

She takes over after Fuxi, passes through flood, conflict, and the mending of the sky, and once again brings humanity back into the world. That is why she can stand among the Three Sovereigns.

She does not only create people.

She saves them too.

She does not only appear at the beginning of myth.

She is also the one who catches a world that is about to fall apart.

But even Nuwa's story has to move forward. She does not live forever. After she dies, the tribal alliance still has to continue.

And the next leader will move the story away from creation and cosmic repair toward a far more practical question.

Human beings now exist. The world is stable again.

But what will people eat?

Continue Reading

The next episode is Shennong, the Yan Emperor and Divine Farmer.

He no longer has to answer where humanity came from, or what to do when the sky collapses.

He has to answer the most practical question of all: how to plant, how to eat, and how to stay alive.

Civilization now begins to move from mythic creation toward survival on the land.