Category Archives: Myths

Sacred narratives

Nuwa repairs Heaven

Context:

H is a parental figure of mine who grew up in China and is currently living in California. 

This conversation took place over a weekly phone call with my parents after I asked them about stories that they knew from China. 

Text: 

H: So basically, Nüwa is the goddess in China, well not China but in heaven. She’s a goddess in heaven but she was supposed to keep an eye on Earth. But in very old ancient times, somehow the heaven collapsed because the four pillars that hold heaven collapsed and the Earth was not covered because heaven collapsed. And fire went out of control and water flooded the earth and in order to patch the heaven, Nüwa had to do something. So she melted five different colored stones to patch up the sky and she also cut off the legs of a great turtle. I guess the turtle is also a god, you know, and set those legs as pillars to support the sky. And she also helped to put out the fire and drain the flood, you know the water, and basically she helped save the Earth.

Me: Hmm Okay.

Reflection: 

I think this story is really interesting because it is about a feminine figure who has a lot of power in the world of gods, which is not something very typical in Western culture. It is also interesting because I do not remember this specific goddess, but I do remember that these pillars are part of other tales in Chinese mythology that surround Sun Wukong, a character in Chinese mythology that I learned a lot about as a child. This story also seems to build on the myths that have turtles in which a city or island is on the turtle’s back, although this story is using the turtle’s legs rather than its back. According to other sources, Nuwa also created humans which is why she is so protective of them and rushes to patch up heaven in order to prevent the fall out onto Earth. In some versions of this story, the five different colored stones that were used to patch the heavens explain why the clouds can be multicolored in our sky. 

Greenberg, ByMike. “Who Is the Chinese Goddess Nuwa?” MythologySource, 5 July 2021, https://mythologysource.com/nuwa-chinese-goddess/. 

Chang’e: The Moon Goddess

Context:

Y is my other parental figure of mine who grew up in China and is currently living in California. 

This conversation took place over a weekly phone call with my parents after I asked them about stories that they knew from China. 

Text: 

Y: Chang’e is the one we see the shadow in the moon, and the shadow looks like a lady there.

Me: Oh yeah.

Y: But the story goes that there’s a beautiful woman who’s married to a famous archer, and his name is Hou Yi. The guy is the one who, when in Ancient Times, they had 10 suns. The sun in the sky, not the kids. The sun in the sky, when there was 10 of them, the sky was so hot that the earth, the crops couldn’t grow because of the squelching from the sun, and the soil is cracked and everyone was dying from the heat. So Hou Yi, the husband, because he’s a famous archer, he decided to shoot the nine suns down and just leave one of them left.

Me: Uhuh.

Y: So he pulled his legendary, he had this bow that was a legendary sun and succeeded in shooting down nine of the suns. So the earth was back to normal.

Because of what he did, he met the like, goddess, the goddess decided to reward him with some kind of medicine that will make him live forever. The goddess name is… the jade- no, the Wángmǔ Niángniáng, yeah. Hou Yi felt very, unsure about whether he should take the elixir or the medicine because he didn’t want to live forever after his wife dies. Wife is mortal so if he becomes immortal he’s going to be living alone without his wife. So he just put the medicine underneath the bed or in a closet, wherever, but the wife found out about it and she decided to steal it. And after the husband fell asleep, she took the medicine and drank the medicine, all of it. And after, she felt her body get light and she started to float in the air. Then the husband woke up and saw the wife floating away. He saw her floating away and tried to grab onto her but couldn’t because she was already in the sky. He tried to call her to stop but she couldn’t really stop it. When she saw the moon, she tried to land on the moon and she stayed there forever. Because she couldn’t move after and the husband really missed her so he put out her favorite food, dessert like the mooncake, out every night to hope she will see it and return. But she couldn’t return.

After that, on the moon festival, everyone would eat moon cakes and look at the moon where Chang’e lives. And the moon shadow suggests there’s a rabbit called the jade rabbit to keep her company on the moon. So poor Hou Yi put out the food until he died, basically, but she couldn’t return. She became immortal but he was mortal so he died, eventually. 

Reflection:

This is another story that I was told when I was a kid. I remember distinctly looking up at the moon and imagining the lady on the moon and her rabbit. This origin story is interesting because Chang’e is seen as the moon goddess yet the reason why she is up on the moon is for selfish reasons. Additionally, this plays into the traditional view of the moon as a feminine symbol while the sun is a masculine symbol. While the sun is not her husband, her husband was the one who shot down the other suns in order to restore peace to Earth. I think it is also interesting how the tale affects the food that we consume during the festival as the egg yolks in the mooncakes are meant to represent the moon in the sky. Some versions of the story also explain her reasoning for taking the medicine because they portray her as someone who previously worked in heaven in the Jade Emperor’s palace before she was sentenced to earth for breaking a vase. 


“The Legend of Chang E.” The Legend of Chang E, http://www.moonfestival.org/the-legend-of-chang-e.html.

Vishnu

Story: So my grandma would always tell me this story- well he’s not really a god but he’s the incarnation of a god, um, Krishna, but he’s the incarnation of i think Vishnu if i remember correctly? And it’s just like a cute little story that she used to tell me when i went to sleep, it was to kinda put me to sleep at night, of um so he grew up in a village, he’s the incarnation of a god so he grew up around normal people. And he was a really mischievous kid and him and his friend – his mother used to live in the village and she used to churn butter at  a specific time of the year, and him and his friend would just be like super mischievous and steal that butter, like as they were churning it and  while they weren’t looking. He was known in the village as being this really naughty kid who always did that. And once they caught him and they opened his mouth- because he was like ‘oh I didn’t steal the butter’- and when they opened his mouth they saw the whole universe in his mouth. And that’s when they knew he was divine and uh… yeah.

Thoughts: The informant always really liked Krishna as a child, since their middle name is a form of that name, and was named after Krishna. It was also significant to them because their grandmother used to tell them that story while putting them to bed and they always really looked forward to that. She has since passed away, and it makes him happy to remember her.

Context: The context of this performance was over the phone, and I recorded the informant talking about their own folklore.

Analysis: This story made me want to paint- it was so beautiful and also unlike any story I have ever heard before. I thought a lot about why, and I think it is because there is no real point to the story, it is just visuals. Usually there is a plot to a story, an aim, a goal, a culprit, a villain. This story was more of an exposure of who Krishna really was on the inside, both metaphorically and physically.

Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ in Vietnamese Folklore

Main Piece:

AL: The tale of Lạc Long and Âu Cơ:

Lạc Long Quân was born in 2800 BC. He is the sun of a mountain god… and his mother is uh the sea god. His body is a dragon of some sort even though his parents… Was a sea dragon and his father the son of mountain… [He] was like a human-ish figure. His name, Lạc Long Quân, translates to Dragon Lord of Lạc. Lạc is a place in Vietnam…

Âu Cơ is the daughter of the northern chief… And fairy from the mother… Lạc Long Quân, the dragon, decided to take the form of a handsome man because he has that power, and Âu Cơ is a fairy. And so they married, and um *laughs* interestingly enough, Lạc Long Quân married the daughter but killed the father. I know. It’s weird… You would think that you shouldn’t kill the daughter’s father…

Anyway, so they had sex, and uhm she gave birth to a sack of a hundred eggs, and they grew into a hundred boys… Or children, depending on lore, and reestablished Vietnam. Uhm they say that all ancestors descend form these 100 children… Âu Cơ loved the mountain, so she really liked the north side. Lạc Long Quân loved the water because his mother is a water dragon… And so they decided to split the kids in half, or not in half— *laughs* divide the kids in half, fifty-fifty, and take them to either location… Half of them in the mountain and half of them near the sea… It was agreed by both parents that they would help each other in need. Lạc Long taught his children to fish and tattoo. Âu Cơ taught her children to farm and breed animals.

In Saigon, there are two streets who intersect. One is named Lạc Long, and one is named Âu Cơ, and they intersect because they’re married to each other… It’s very cute… Probably intentional… And then Lạc Long is known as the first king of Vietnam…

Context:

Taken from a conversation with my roommate in the Cale & Irani Apartments at USC Village. Him and I are of Vietnamese descent.

Analysis:

Myths are like adult versions of fairy tales. Historically, they have helped societies try to understand elements of the natural world or the scientific phenomena around them. Here, this myth plays into patriotic ideals in the founding of a nation and a unification between the rivalry of North and South Vietnam. These cross-generational stories are kept alive by the communities performing them. These two figures are so deeply incorporated into Vietnamese culture that there’s many pieces of art dedicated to them. In fact, there is a temple dedicated to the Dragon Lord. Furthermore, the intersecting streets are just further proof of how stories like these unify people through their collective imagination, childhoods, and rich cultural histories and beliefs.

Pork over the Pali Highway

Background information: OLP is a 21-year-old student at Georgetown University. in They were raised in the Bay Area, but currently live in DC for school. Their parents met in Hawaii, and they were born in Honolulu. They visit frequently with their family, and their dad was raised there. OLP is white, Filipino, Mexican, and Japanese American.

OLP: You aren’t supposed to take pork over the Pali Highway in Hawaii. This comes from the Hawaiian myth that the goddess Pele had, like, a bad breakup with her boyfriend who was a pig god. So they divided the island between them, so taking pork from one side of the island to the other can anger Pele. This is pretty well-known in Hawaii but I’ve also heard from friends of my parents who said they’ve taken pork over the pali and their car broke down. The superstition says you won’t be able to finish your journey and you might be surrounding by spirits. A lot of locals take this very seriously and I think it’s an important way for people to show respect for Hawaiian traditions as well.

Me: So your family and family friends all observe this practice when you visit?

OLP: (laughs) Well…I’m vegetarian so yes. But yes, especially since so many people have had experiences where, like, something has happened if they tried. And it’s just good to respect things like this sometimes.

This is one of the only pieces of folklore that I collected in which someone had heard the same story directly from multiple people. I think this is very interesting, because it shows that these practices are alive and well, and that although Hawaii is often just seen as a tourist spot or getaway, there are traditions and cultures that need to be respected there. I think it’s really important that pieces of folklore like this – things that come from a time before a specific place or culture was colonized/occupied – continue to be shared and made known.