In the beginning, there was nothing. From nothing, there appeared the universe, infinite but without form or feature. Unseen forces then decided to shape the amorphous mass into a cosmic egg, where the perfectly opposed principles of yin and yang were balanced and out of which emerged Pangu, the primordial being. Shrugging off the after-birth, the hairy and horned giant proceeded to create our world. With one swing of his giant axe, he separated yin from yang, creating the earth and sky. And to keep yin and yang from becoming one again, Pangu stood between them and, over the next 18,000 years, Atlas-like, straddled the ether to fix the two principles in the positions they came to permanently occupy.
Once yin and yang were reconciled to this permanence, Pangu breathed, and his breath became the wind, mist, and clouds; his voice, the thunder; his left eye, the Sun; his right eye, the Moon; his head, the mountains and the far reaches of the world. And so it was that the rivers, the fertile land, the stars and Milky Way, the forests and flora, the rain, the animal kingdom, they were similarly all fashioned from the various elements of his being.
The culture, society, and identity of a civilization are shaped in part by its “mythology,” the accumulation of cultural history, folklore, and religious tradition transmitted and perfected over centuries in oral or written form. The mythology of the Chinese nation similarly embraces its unique creation legends, the culture and values of a society in the making, as well as the founding of the all-pervasive state. And like other narrative traditions, we must presume it represents some factual recording of historical experience.
Archeological evidence suggests that advanced human habitation was established by the Xia Dynasty (2070 - 1600 BCE) with the coalition of clans who inhabited the banks of the Yellow River, the flowing permanence of “China’s Sorrow” and, surely, the inspiration for the tales of the deluge integral to the formation of the Chinese nation.
Civilization coincided with the advent of the Shang Dynasty (1600 - 1046 BCE). Also clustered on the banks of the Yellow River, the age of Shang displayed the first rudiments of a pictographic style of writing on oracle bones, a material legacy valuable to posterity. The next 800 years are marked by fractured states pitted against one another as the transition was made from a tribal coalescence to the more structured and centralized edifice of a deep-seated feudalism.
The subsequent organized chaos of the Zhou Dynasty culminated in the ascent of the Qin Dynasty with the founder, Shi Huang Ti, crowned as the first emperor of a unified country and responsible for the construction of the engineering marvel known as the Great Wall. The Zhou lasted a mere 15 years, and made way for the Han dynasty, who spanned four centuries and are credited with greater unification and establishing a complex bureaucratic system on Confucian principles.
The Han had an understanding of their place in a larger world and forged the Silk Road, that single most important artery to foster trade and connect China with Central Asia and Europe. The early centuries of the contemporary age again saw China in the grip of the chaos created by small competing kingdoms, and nearly four hundred years were to elapse till, in 581 AD, the age of Sui was ushered in, and with it, the advent of a period of another 800 years considered to be the Medieval Age of Chinese history.
The Sui undertook massive civil projects such as the construction of the Grand Canal and the partial rebuilding of the Great Wall, and introduced the imperial examination system to select a talented bureaucracy to administer what was now a far-flung and diverse empire.
Poetry, pottery, painting, and woodblock printing, the staple fare of a true cultural efflorescence, was achieved during the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907). The succeeding three centuries of the Age of Song was again a time of deep social fissures and technological advance and prosperity, with further development of the “four great inventions”: Paper, printing, the compass, and gunpowder.
The “era of the foreigner” was ushered in by the mighty Mongols, who assumed the household name of “Yuan” and ruled from 1279 to 1368. Founded by Kublai Khan, the Yuan Dynasty made Dadu (modern-day Beijing) the capital of the first foreign dynasty in China. The final age of imperial dynasties was heralded by the homespun Ming (1368 - 1644) and the accession of the Manchus from the northeast, who ruled China from 1644 to 1912 under the imperial name of “Qing.”
It is the tragedy of the Chinese nation that political instability and the fratricidal wars of nation-building should alternate with the catastrophe wrought by nature. Statistics record that China has suffered three of the world’s 10 worst fatal earthquakes, including the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake that reportedly killed more than 830,000 people. The death toll of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake was estimated to be between 242,419 and 779,000, and the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake killed 200,000 to 240,000.
As if the disaster wrought by the clash of tectonic plates was not sufficient, the ravages of water have always accompanied the march of the Chinese people. Estimated deaths in the 1931 floods range between two million and four million, recalled as the deadliest natural disaster of all times. The 1887 Yellow River flood claimed the lives of between nine hundred thousand to two million.
The 1938 Yellow River followed with 500,000–700,000 deaths. The sullen and wide stream of the Hwang Ho, laden with silt and sediment which leant it the yellow pall that inspired its name, would whimsically overflow its banks seemingly with the sole intent of submerging the fragile human civilization existing precariously on its banks.
Coalition, unification, chaos, war, unity under a powerful figure, the creation of a society based upon a strict hierarchy comprehensible to a people nurtured on the precepts of a quasi-religious code of behaviour and conduct, are the milestones of the march of this unique civilization.
Perhaps the creation of the Communist state in 1949, with its corpus of contemporary mythology based on the notion of a people’s state and its quest for organization and inner harmony tempered by a steely resolve to survive, was also the logical outcome of both the tragedy and resilient success of this civilization.
Let us continue to examine the progress of a vast nation which wagers on the probability that there will always be a sufficient number to propagate their way of life and thought.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor based in India.
