Hello, and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Beibei.
Today, I'm going to talk about the first major battle in ancient Chinese history.
And you'll see, it's full of weird details.
The battle between the Yellow Emperor and Chiyou took place at Zholu.
As I mentioned last time, the guys in Chiyou's camp were giants with heads and bodies of copper and iron.
Definitely not a pretty sight.
Maybe not as bloody, though.
The troops on the Yellow Emperor's side were strong, too.
And he also had the help of deities and wild beasts.
So it was not easy to tell from the start which side would win.
One day, when the troops were all tangled up in a battle, a huge cloud of thick mist came over the men.
Nobody could see anything anymore.
Now, that was a magic trick by Chi You.
The milky mist lasted for three days.
And the yellow emperor didn't know what to do until a man came forward with a new invention.
The man said to the emperor I will build a machine that will always point to the south, no matter what.
Now we know that it's a compass.
But back then, no one had ever heard of or even thought of making anything like that.
So that seemed almost like magic in the ancient times.
But the yellow emperor believed him.
The man soon built a cart with a little man on top that always pointed to the south.
And it was aptly named the cart that pointed to the south.
指南车
With the help of this fancy new gadget, the Yellow Emperor was able to lead his troops out of the mist and straight to the enemy camp.
The Yellow Emperor also had another great help, a dragon with wings.
In Western culture, as far as I know, dragons are known to be able to spit out fire.
But in China...
They are associated with spitting out water instead.
The dragon flew over Chiyou's camp and spit out so much water that the camp was flooded, carrying away a lot of its sad soldiers.
How did Chiyou respond to this?
He wasn't going to wait and let everyone in his camp get all rusty.
He had a few supernatural friends in his camp too.
For example, Uncle Wind and Master Rain.
They whipped up such a storm that the soldiers under the Yellow Emperor's command couldn't even go anywhere.
Even the dragon was almost blown away.
So Chiyo kind of won this one.
Seeing the tide of things, the daughter of the Yellow Emperor couldn't sit still anymore.
And this daughter of the Yellow Emperor was not someone that you would ever want to date.
Her name was Ba, and she was quite a character.
She liked to wear bright-colored dresses, more like gowns.
Well, that sounds fine.
But she led such a secluded life, probably like that of the Queen Mother of the West.
So she didn't really associate with anyone.
Why was that?
She's got a good reason though.
It's because she had a volcano inside her body.
I think people can get really imaginative with these folk tales.
The daughter of the Yellow Emperor was also known as the Spirit of Drought.
So wherever she went, all the water would be sucked dry.
And that's basically why she lived all by herself.
Isn't that a bit like the opposite of Elsa, the Ice Queen?
They should really combine their magical powers.
So with such power, she's got to help her dad.
And all she needed to do was simply take a walk around the enemy camp.
And the ground underneath would crack up with patterns like the shell of a turtle.
The storm was over instantly with only the bright sun shining in the sky.
The table was turning again, but it wasn't enough to win the war.
The yellow emperor had to whip out his ultimate secret weapon, the bull drum.
There was this legendary bull called Kui.
It looked sort of like a bull, but it did not have horns.
And what's even weirder, It had only one leg.
Hmm, I can't really picture that in my mind.
Well, this quay lived underwater, so I guess it wasn't that inconvenient.
What power did this quay have?
I guess it's a bit similar to that of a monster of storms.
Every time it came out of water, a storm would gather.
And when it shouted, it sounded like thunder.
While all the time, the sun would be shining too.
Sounds like some meteorological confusion.
So when the Yellow Emperor heard of this creature, he ordered it captured.
You would think that the Emperor would use this monster in a battle.
But actually, he had it slaughtered and made into a drum.
I mean, with its skin.
I'm not sure if that's a very efficient usage of supernatural power.
But let's see.
The Quay wasn't the only monster to be captured. there was another one called Monster of Thunder.
Before being captured, it lived a free life.
And what it liked to do the most was petting its own belly.
And whenever he did that, there would be loud sounds of thunder.
And guess what the Yellow Emperor did with him?
He made it into a drumstick.
Not like a fried chicken leg, but a drumstick that could be used with a drum made with kuei.
I feel bad for these two monsters.
They weren't really bothering anybody.
And before they knew what was happening, they were turned into a drum set.
See, that's why we say in Chinese pigs shouldn't get too fat and people shouldn't become too famous.
Once you're famous for something, someone will come to hunt you down.
Anyway, back to the battle.
The Yellow Emperor used this custom-made drum and drumstick and scared his enemies with all the noise they made.
And with the help of his solitary daughter and the special drum, the Yellow Emperor won the battle.
So this was the first major battle in ancient Chinese history, in simplest terms.
And it serves as a reflection of the conflicts between the different tribes back then.
This major one was over, but other smaller battles were ongoing too.
We'll get to one in our next episode.
Hope to see you then.
Bye for now.
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