Hello, and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Bebe.
As I mentioned today, I'm going to share the stories about the god of water, whose name was Gong Gong.
He was in charge of all the rivers and lakes under the sky.
People who scraped a living from the land have a lot of respect, or maybe I should say fear for the god of water.
Whether or not they have the right amount of rain at the right time meant everything for farmers back then and even today.
People prayed and prayed to the god of water for no floods and no droughts.
According to legends, the god of water had a human body with a serpent's tail, and he even had a head of red hair.
Unfortunately, the color of his hair was also the color of his temper.
Gong Gong, the god of water, was passionate but also easily agitated.
I guess explosive might be the right word to describe his temper.
Most of the stories about Gong Gong were about his fights with other gods.
He had clashes with the God of Fire and even the Lord of Heaven.
Now, these were not just fights between little boys.
They had serious consequences for human beings.
Let me explain.
When ordinary people like us lose our temper, we might cry or shout, and the feisty ones might smash a few pieces of unwanted ceramics.
But when the god of water got mad, he let off steam by flooding rivers and lakes, washing away a whole year's labor for farmers.
So the people all prayed for a happy god of water.
But the thing is, there were other gods who had tempers of their own.
And it was just his luck that the lord of heaven at that time was Zhuang Xu, who was not only more authoritative but more belligerent too.
What an unhappy coincidence.
They were thorns in each other's eyes.
And besides, the fact that the Lord of Heaven was more powerful than him was hard to swallow.
Look how the people fear me and honor me.
Why do I have to prostrate in front of you?
So what did he have in mind?
Well, something people in power really detest.
He got around to a bunch of other deities and gods and planned to overthrow the rule of the Lord of Heaven.
How would the Lord of Heaven take this?
He was going to nail him, of course.
They got into a fight, or more like a war.
And apparently, heaven didn't have enough space for two militant gods.
So the fight carried down to the mortal realms.
The god of water was no match for the lord of heaven, who was a lord of heaven for a reason.
He fled to the northwest, all the way to a place called Buzhou Mountain.
The Buzhou Mountain was one rocky place, basically a barren pillar reaching to the heavens.
To connect this to our previous stories.
Some say it was one of the legs of the turtle that goddess Nuwa used to support the falling sky.
Remember from a few episodes back?
So this rocky mountain was in his way.
Poor God of Water, he had the Lord of Heaven right on his tail.
And he did have a serpent's tail.
He had never been forced to an ugly corner like this.
He was mad, ready to explode kind of mad.
And what would a spoiled God do in such a case?
Well, he smashed into the Rocky Mountain head on.
It was death or honor.
The people on Earth might have watched on while tracking watermelon seeds if the god of water hadn't been so strong and foolhardy.
You don't get such a show every day.
But the Bujo Mountain couldn't take the hit.
It broke in the middle and rocks rained down, some bigger than houses.
Now this was not funny anymore.
And let's remember, this was one of the pillars that was supporting the sky.
Oops!
The sky started tilting to the northwest and the Earth started tilting in the other direction, the southeast.
And ever since then, so they say, all the stars started moving westwards and all the big rivers flowed to the east.
The balance of the universe had been seriously disturbed.
Now the northwest is higher, and the southeast is lower.
On a side note, there is a saying in China that big rivers rush to the east.
And for a really long time I did think all major rivers flowed to the east as a natural law or something.
But it's actually just for China.
In China.
The Qinghai-Tibet plateau is not only China's highest plateau, but also the world's, and many major rivers in China originate from there.
Why?
Because of the ice on the plateau, which melts and form little streams which then come together and merge into major rivers.
And since, as I mentioned, the landscape in China is lower on the southeast side, water flow that way into the ocean.
The biggest two rivers in China are the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, both flowing mightily toward the east.
And the story of the god of water was how ancient Chinese explained it.
Some of you might ask, what happened to the god of water with his head smashed into a mountain?
Did he die?
Not really.
He was one tough kid, and his offsprings inherited his militant nature and had fights of their own.
This is the story of God of Water for now, and we will talk about the God of Spring and Fall in the next episode.
Hope to see you then.
Bye for now.
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Special thanks go out to Sanlian Zhongdu for their help in creating the content for this show.
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