Nüwa女娲娘娘

History vs. fiction

The cause of mending the sky and the making of humans from clay are described differently.

• based on factCause of mending the sky

  The Huainanzi, chapter 'Lanming Xun', records that 'the four poles were broken, the nine provinces split', so Nüwa smelted five-colored stones to repair the azure sky. The Huainanzi, chapter 'Tianwen Xun', records that Gonggong angrily struck Mount Buzhou, causing 'the pillar of heaven to break, and the cords of the earth to snap'. The direct causal link between Nüwa mending the sky and Gonggong striking the mountain does not exist in early texts such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas; it is a mythological system gradually pieced together by later generations.

• novel inventionMaking humans from clay

  The widely circulated myth of Nüwa making humans from clay is not explicitly recorded in early pre-Qin texts. The Songs of Chu, 'Tianwen', only raises the question, 'Nüwa has a body, who crafted it?' The Classic of Mountains and Seas, 'Dahuang Xijing', only mentions ten gods named Nüwa's intestines. The claim of making humans from yellow clay finds no basis in the aforementioned early texts; it is the result of gradual formation in later folk legends.