Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,740
edits
Chinese Mythology: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (removed Category:Oral Tradition; added Category:Religion using HotCat) |
No edit summary |
||
| (2 intermediate revisions by one other user not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Useful Notes}}
{{cleanup|This page needs to be revised to have a form more like our other pages on world mythologies, with a descriptive article at the top before going into specific details.}}
=== Creation Stories ===
* Everything began as formless chaos. The world was created when this chaos coalesced into the form of Pan Gu, the first being, in equal measures of Yin and Yang. Pan Gu then used his great axe to split the Yin and Yang into Earth and Heaven respectively, then kept them seperated by pushing up the sky. This took 18,000 years, after which Pan Gu died. His breath became the wind, his voice the thunder. His left eye became the Sun and his right the Moon, his hair the Stars and Milky Way. His body became the mountains, his blood the rivers, his muscles the fertile soil, his fur the plants, his bones the valuable minerals, his bone marrows the sacred diamonds. His sweat fell as rain, and the fleas on his fur became the fish and animals of the land. This is more or less the [[Taoism|Taoist]] creation story, although scholars have suggested that the Pan Gu story is not Chinese in origin at all.
Line 32 ⟶ 33:
* '''Huang Di''': The Yellow Emperor, and supposed ancestor of all modern ethnic Chinese. He was something of a [[Science Hero]], teaching the people how to build shelters, tame wild animals and grow the five Chinese cereals. He also invented carts, boats, clothing, the guqin, the diadem, palace rooms, the bow sling, astronomy, the calendar, calculations, sound laws, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|football]], and wrote the Inner Canon on internal medicine that all traditional Chinese medicine was based on. He commissioned Cang Jie to create the first Chinese characters, and his main wife Leizu taught people how to weave silk from silkworms and dye clothes.
* '''Guan Yu''': The god of war and business, originally a general from the [[Romance of the Three Kingdoms|Three Kingdoms]] period. It is an interesting thing that both policemen and criminals pray to Guan Yu.
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Celestial Bureaucracy]]
* [[The Four Gods]]
* [[Moon Rabbit]]
{{creatortropes}}
* [[Celestial Bureaucracy]]: The [[Trope Maker]].
* [[Deity of Human Origin]]: Humans were frequently promoted to godhood in the [[Celestial Bureaucracy]].
* [[Draconic Divinity]]: Chinese Mythology is considered to be the [[Trope Maker]], boasting the earliest known instances of dragon worship in any culture. Specific dragons such as the Four Dragon Kings, Qinglong, Huanglong, and Zhulong are viewed as the living embodiment of natural forces such as nature, the seasons, and weather, while dragons in general are viewed as the masculine yin to the feminine yang of phoenixes. Dragons have also been used as symbols of nationalism and imperial might, with many an emperor adopting them as a personal symbol of their power.
* [[Kids Prefer Boxes]]: There's a Chinese Buddhist parable about a shopkeeper that tried to sell a valuable pearl by putting it inside a pretty box. Unfortunately the person that bought it was only interested in buying the box and left the pearl. The [[Aesop]] to the story is not to ignore the deeper meanings of Buddhism in favor of the superficial.
* [[Narnia Time]]: Used in a number of stories; see the trope page for details.
Line 42 ⟶ 49:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Useful Notes/China]]
[[Category:Religion]]
▲[[Category:Chinese Mythology]]
| |||