Hello, and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Beibei.
Today, we'll be talking about another one of the five ancient Chinese emperors.
The first one was the Yellow Emperor, followed by Zhuan Xu, who pushed the sky further away from the earth.
Now we're on to the third emperor in line, who was called Di Kuo.
It is said that Di Ku was the nephew of Zhuanshu.
Information about the third emperor is rather confusing, but it's pretty clear that he had a few sons who became important figures.
One of the sons was called Xie, who became the ancestor of Shang Dynasty.
Another was called Houji, who became the ancestor of Zhou Dynasty.
Speaking of the Shang Dynasty, one has to mention the oracle scripts, which were inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells.
The discovery of the oracle scripts showed that written words first appeared during the Shang Dynasty, which was later overthrown by the Zhou Dynasty.
As we mentioned, Xie was the founder of Shang Dynasty, and Houji that of the Zhou Dynasty.
Now to distinguish themselves as extraordinary figures.
Stories were created about their origins.
Xie and Hou Ji became human beings with unusual births.
Let's start with Xie.
His mother, named Jian Di, was the wife of the third emperor that we mentioned at the beginning, who we basically skipped over.
One day, Jian Di and her sisters found a swallow with black feathers that had laid an egg on the ground and then flown away.
Jian Di, being curious and hungry, picked up the tiny white egg and ate it raw, just like that.
But of course, it was no simple egg.
It brought Jian Di a son.
Care to guess who that was?
Yep, he was Xie, of course.
Then, many generations later, an offspring of Xie founded Shang Dynasty, whose ruler believed that their ancestor came from the egg of a bird.
The story about Hou Ji was a lot sadder.
His mom, was also the wife of Diku.
And legend has it that one day, when she was taking a walk, she saw a huge footprint, as big as a pond.
Her companions were all talking about what kind of giant it was.
When Houji's mother also a very curious lady stepped onto the footprint to see if anything would happen.
Something did happen.
She reeled with dizziness as soon as she put her foot on the footprint.
And when she got home, guess what?
She gave birth to a son, and a very weird one too.
The baby was covered with a layer of flesh.
Everybody said that this baby was not a good sign. and they decided to throw him away.
They first abandoned him in a narrow valley through which many cows and horses passed.
But the amazing thing was none of the animals stepped onto the baby.
They all seemed to know that they should not hurt him.
Maybe this baby really was unusual. saw the people who left him to die.
Then someone suggested that they should leave him to die on top of the ice lake, and they did.
Something strange happened again.
A big bird descended from heaven.
It spread its wings and covered up the baby with its feathers to keep it warm.
The flesh that enveloped the baby broke open and the little baby boy inside cried finally like a normal baby.
People were really intrigued by now.
So maybe this unlucky baby was actually a lucky one.
Just look at how he simply refused to die.
They wrapped up the naked boy and brought him back, and as if to make sure that the boy would never forget his sorry past.
They named him Qi, which means to abandon.
Qi grew up different from other children.
His favorite game was to plant things, and working in the fields was what he liked to do the most.
He planted grains, and they brought forward tasty meals.
It was such a rewarding experience for him.
Day after day, that's what Qi did, completely devoted to growing crops.
And people, who were mostly farmers back then, admired him and started calling him Houjii.
It was the offspring of Hou Ji that started Zhou Dynasty.
So why did people back then make up stories about these unusual births?
One theory is that back then in matriarchal societies kids lived with their moms and other females in the family and didn't really know who their fathers were.
So they could get a bit creative when it came to who their fathers were.
Some popular answers to the question of where did I come from, in my parents' generation included.
Oh, I picked you up from the garbage dump, or you grew from that chunk of mud, or something like that.
Well, nowadays...
Modern parents are much more scientific, but less fun.
Back in the ancient times, though, emperors made up stories that would mystify their origins.
So that's the story about the two emperors, and we will be on to another one called Di Yao the next time.
Hope to see you then, and bye for now.
If you've got any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact us via email at podcast at cricomcn or find us on Twitter China Plus Pods.
