TIANSHUI is a small city located in the north-western province of Gansu.
This place not only plays an important role in the Silk Road economic belt, it is the birthplace of Fuxi, a cultural hero in Chinese legend and mythology credited with starting an organised governance society of ancient China.
According to historical records, Fuxi was a descendant of Suiren, who discovered fire in the Stone Age some three million years ago.
If Suiren was the one who upgraded the life of mankind by putting an end to consuming raw food, Fuxi was the one who led the people into a civilised society.
It is widely believed Fuxi taught his men to make tools for fishing and hunting, helped them in farming, poultry breeding and weaving.
He also guided them to build shelters, tame wildlife, make threads from silkworm cocoons, create music and “bagua” -- the eight trigrams known as the yin and yang energy map commonly used today in fengshui studies.
Fuxi invented written characters to assist the people in jotting down important tasks. Before this, they tied a knot on the rope as a reminder.
He also established rules of order, and created nine departments to be handled by six officials to oversee the respective fields.
Although he married his own sister Nuwa, he set up marriage rules to ban close-blood marriages and promote the one-husband-one-wife family system.
Apart from these, he took a part of various animals to create the dragon totem for his tribe which is still being used until today, resulting in the Chinese to be known as the Descendant of the Dragon.
The mythical dragon is a combination of the snake body, crocodile head, deer antlers, tiger eyes, fish scales, lizard legs, eagle claws and shark tail.
Since 1988, an official event to commemorate Fuxi is held annually in Tianshui, where a Fuxi Temple is located.
The temple, built in 1483, is the oldest and best-preserved Fuxi temple in China.
It houses a 3m-tall clay statue of Fuxi carrying a ‘bagua’ pattern.
In the vicinity, there are 64 old cypress trees planted at various directions as per the ‘bagua’.
Tens of thousands of Chinese from around the country and overseas would head to the city for the event that falls on the 13th day of the fifth month according to the lunar calendar.
However, due to Covid-19 prevention and control measures, the event was only opened to those within China and, thus, greatly reduced the number of attendees to around 1,000 since last year.
Live-streaming was conducted online for those who could not make it to the city.
The worshippers were welcomed by musicians and performers dressed in ancient Chinese attire, from the arch leading to the temple.
After a simple but grand ritual, the visitors showed their gratitude and appreciation to Fuxi by taking a bow and presenting flowers to him.
China’s history is too long and complex to verify the existence of Fuxi and Nuwa because their stories were passed down by word of mouth.
They could be greatly mythologised to make him appear more “powerful” and “heroic” but historians believed Fuxi did exist.
“Records of Fuxi were documented in some relics, stone tablets and monuments that were unearthed.
“Fuxi might not be a person but a tribe who has made great contributions to mankind by forming an orderly society,” said a committee of the event organisers.
Documentation of Fuxi could be traced back as early as the Chunqiu period (770BC to 476BC) when rulers of the Qin Kingdom (ancestors of Qin Shihuang who unified China in 221BC) started worshipping him.
Over the years there were many versions of their stories, and some contradict each other.
A more common belief was that Fuxi has a human head and a serpent body, whose mother was a princess of Huaxu, a kingdom located in today’s Henan province.
Folklore has it that the princess became pregnant after stepping onto a giant footprint while travelling to Leize – which is believed to be today’s Tianshui – but she only delivered the baby 12 years later.
Not much has been written on the birth of Nuwa, who also has a human upper body and a snake tail.
However, it was said that she was married to her own brother to maintain exclusivity, which was a common practice of the tribe.
Another belief said Fuxi and Nuwa were the only survivors of a massive flood, so they were forced to marry each other to ensure the continuity of mankind.
Some mythologists suggested that Fuxi and Nuwa were the ancestors of mankind, just like Adam and Eve in the Bible, although it is generally accepted by the Chinese that the first human is Pangu, who was born from an egg and grew up tall enough to split the land and the sky.
However, documentations on Pangu only existed during the Three Kingdom period (220–280AD), some 1,000 years later after Fuxi.
A popular folk story about Nuwa – also known as the Mother of the Earth – was that she was a goddess who created mankind with clay.
One day, one of the four supporting pillars between the land and the sky broke, which led to a part of the sky collapsing, turning the world into chaos.
On seeing this, Nuwa used five-coloured stones to patch up the hole and saved the world.
Whatever their stories are, this beautiful world we live in must be protected at all costs.
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