Every religion and mythology has a creation myth. The Ancient Greeks believed in Chaos and Gaea, who gave birth to the first beings. In the Christian Bible, God spends six days forming animals, plants, and people. In Ancient China, there was Nüwa. 

Society in Ancient China was matriarchal, and people believed that childbirth was a miraculous event that did not require the participation of a male. As such, Nüwa was an incredibly powerful and well-respected goddess; she took on various roles which, as well as wife and sister, included emperor, leader, and creator. She was ‘a positive and even saviour-like image among the Chinese’, but she began to fade into the background when China adopted a patriarchal system, and her brother/husband Fuxi took prominence.

But the first mention of Nüwa in literature (in the religious poems, The Songs of Chu) presented her as an independent deity. It wasn’t until the Tang dynasty many years later that stories of Nüwa and Fuxi as co-creators of the universe emerged, and by then there were already clear myths about Nüwa.

Her creation myth is one of the most well-known. As the story goes, Nüwa was lonely, as she was one of the only beings on Earth. So she took some yellow clay in her hands and began to mould it into human figures, thus creating the very first people. Eventually, she grew tired of forming people out of her bare hands, and so she dipped some rope in the mud and swung it around. Wherever the drops landed, people formed. Even after all this, Nüwa was still lonely, so she made sure humans would be able to reproduce by dividing them into men and women.

This method of creating people also created a social order; those who were formed by Nüwa personally became the nobility, whereas the ones who fell from the string became the peasantry.

Chinese culture is supposed to have formed in the third millennium BC, not long after the formation of humanity. It was originally ruled by Three Sovereigns, and, later, Five Emperors. Their identities are confused, but eleven figures are named as having had one of these roles—Nüwa is one of them. A female ruler was rare, so she faced much opposition, forcing her to go to war with a tribal chief. She bested him, but his shame at being beaten by a woman meant he believed it better to die, so he banged his head against the Heavenly Bamboo that grew at the battle site. Doing so may have torn a hole in the heavens and caused a flood.

Another similarity between many religions/myths is a flood story, often caused by a god intent on destroying or harming humanity, as well as snakes being regarded as evil creatures. Certainly, this is the case in the Bible, with Adam and Eve being tempted by a snake and God sending down a flood to punish humans.

But Nüwa—often depicted as a half-snake goddess—contrasts sharply against the Christian God. She appeared to think kindly towards humans and she protects them during the Ancient Chinese version of the flood myth.

There are various stories as to what caused the flood. One is the incident outlined above, when a chief broke the heavens. Other accounts say that the pillars holding up the heavens were broken by warring gods; another suggests that the heavens were imperfect, and became worse over time.

Whatever the case, the constant in all versions is that Nüwa fixed the heavens and saved humanity.

She did this by taking five coloured stones—red, yellow, green, black, and white—and melting them down, using them to patch up the holes. It is said that this is how the clouds took on different colours. Nüwa also killed a giant tortoise and used its legs to prop up the heavens. One of these legs was slightly shorter than the rest, and so, ever since, the sun, moon, and stars travel west, and all rivers run southeast.

Nüwa then set herself to putting out fires, drying up the floor, and driving away the animals that had started to threaten humanity. Thus, as well as the creator of humans, she was also the saviour.

There are many other myths about Nüwa, including one where she punishers a human emperor who wrote an erotic poem on the wall of her temple, and one where she was the inventor of music.

Sadly, she began to fade in importance over time. So says Edward H. Schafer: ‘Her gradual degradation from her ancient eminence was partly due to the contempt of some eminent and educated men for animalian gods, and partly to the increasing domination of masculinity in elite social doctrine’

But there are still traces of Nüwa all over China and, if the stories are to be believed, in the very Earth itself.

Sources:

• Lee, Chie, ‘The Legend of the White Snake: A Personal Amplification’, Psychological Perspectives, 50.2 (2007), 235–53
• Wang, Cathy Yue, ‘Chinese Folklore for Modern Times: Three Feminist Re-Visions of The Legend of the White Snake’, Asian Studies Review, 44.2 (2020), 183–200
• https://symbolsage.com/nuwa-chinese-mythology/
• https://mythologysource.com/nuwa-chinese-goddess/
• https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nuwa