Chinese Myth: Pangu, The Creator of World

Most cultures around the world have their own creation legends. In different myths and stories, our world was created in several creative ways. Here we share with you one of the Chinese creation myths familiar to most Chinese people, hope you like it.

Long long ago, there were no sky and earth but only dark gas, like a gigantic black egg. There was a giant sleeping inside the egg, his name is Pangu (Chinese name: 盘古, Pinyin: pán gǔ).

One day, Pangu woke up from his sleep. He wanted to stretch out but was restricted by the limited space around him. So he pushed his hands up and tore the huge eggshell from the inside and stood up.

The torn gas was splited into "chaos" and "purity". The "chaos" submerged and became earth, the "purity" raised and became sky. Pangu then stepped on the ground with his hands against the sky in order not to let "chaos" and "purity" become one again. Since then, the sky was raising, the earth was thickening and Pangu was growing, each by 1 Zhang (丈, Pinyin: zhàng, traditional Chinese unit of length, varies from 170cm to 310cm in different periods of ancient time, moderm Zhang equals to 333cm), every day.

After 18000 years, the sky was so high and the earth was so thick that they would never reunite. Pangu was exhausted and collapsed to the ground. Pangu's breath turned into wind and cloud, his voice into thunder, his left eye into sun and right eye into moon, his blood and tears into rivers, his muscles into fertile soil, his fur into vegetation, his sweat into rain, his hair into stars.

Pangu died and turned into the wonderful world we live in today.