About 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty (商朝), there was a military commander named Li Jin (李靖). Li Jing had a son called Nezha (哪吒) and oddly had no bathroom in his big mansion. When Nezha was seven, on an unseasonably hot day in May, the boy told his mother he was going to take a bath in a […]
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Classics of Mountains and Seas (山海经) is a collection of Chinese mythology, geography and medicine compiled about 3,000 to 2,500 years ago. Here are some mythical creatures depicted in the book.
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Ghost Month Ghost parade – ink painting by Gong Kai, a 13th-century artist. August 1, 2019, is the first day of lunar July and lunar July is viewed as the ghost month in Chinese tradition since it is the time when shadowy beings would have a better chance to sneak into the human world. During that period the yin yang […]
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August 1 is the first day of lunar July in 2019 and lunar July is viewed as the ghost month in Chinese tradition since it is the time when the border security between the yin-yang worlds is a bit slack so the shadowy beings could easily sneak into the human domain to wreak havoc. Ghostbuster Zhong Kui and his ghost […]
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Eight Daoist immortals – ink painting by a contemporary Chinese artist Historically, the Eight Immortals could refer to 8 different sets of Daoists. It was until the Ming Dynasty, the general consensus has been reached based on Wu Yuantai’s “Journey to the East, the Source of the Eight Immortals Legend (八仙出处东游记)”. Since then, the following eight historical figures are commonly […]
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According to Chinese mythology, Chinese people were created by Nuwa, while her male counterpart Fuxi created Chinese culture hence transformed the Chinese into a civilised people. In this sense, Nuwa is like a mother and Fuxi is like a teacher.
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In Chinese mythology, most beings in the celestial worlds more or less look like humans. The difference between the bodies of the terrestrial humans and the celestial beings are that the latter is much more refined in substance, more graceful in appearance, lighter in weight, shining in colour and transformable in shape since it is not formed with flesh and blood […]
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This more than 3,000-year-old bronze vessel, recovered in 2002 from an antique market, has 98 Chinese characters on the botton with the opening lines praising the legendary Great Yu’s hydraulic projects nearly 5,000 years ago to control the flood of the Yellow River.
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The 9th Fairy’s Platform (九仙女台), a Daoist temple, was initially built during the Tang Dynasty in the middle of a river in Shanxi Province. As legend has it, a female immortal from a celestial world once visited this place in the appearance of a homeless girl and lived on a rock in the river. By then there were two dragons fighting […]
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Lady Chang’e and the Moon Day As Chinese legend goes, a long long time ago right here on this planet, ten suns suddenly appeared in the sky and refused to go away. The land was burning and the people were dying. A man named Houyi heroically shot down the nine suns and left only one to light the sky. Life […]
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The love story between the stars of Altair and Vega located on the two sides of the Milky Way is one of the oldest Chinese fairy tales. A Forbidden Love between Two Stars As the legend goes, in the beginning, there was no Milky Way in the sky and the stars could easily meet each other whenever they pleased. Vega […]
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A firewood collector watching two immortals paying chess in Mt. Lanke in Zhejiang Province – a coloured ink painting by Ming Dynasty scholar, politician and artist Zhang Yining (张以宁 1301-1370) The legend of Mt. Lanke During Jin Dynasty in the 4th century, a guy went to Mt. Lanke collecting firewoods and saw two men playing chess Weiqi (Go) on a stone. Like […]
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