CHINESE IDEA OF CREATION.
According to one native authority, China, that is, the world was evolved out of chaos exactly 3,276,494 years ago. This evolution was brought about by the action of a First Cause or Force which separated into two principles, active and passive, male and female. Or as some native writers explain it, out of a great egg came a man. Out of the upper half of the egg he created the heavens and out of the lower half he created the earth. He created five elements, earth, water, fire, metal and wood. Out of the vapor from gold he created man and out of vapor from wood he created woman. Traditional pictures of this first man and first woman represent them wearing for dress, girdles of fig leaves. He created the sun to rule the day, the moon to rule the night, and the stars. Those who care to go deeper into these traditions than the limits of this work permit will find ample material for interesting research in the analogies to Christian history.
These principles, male and female, found their material embodiment in heaven and earth and became the father and mother of all things, beginning with man, who was immediately associated with them in a triumvirate of creative powers. Then ensued ten immense periods, the last of which has been made by some Chinese writers on chronology to end where every sober history of China should begin, namely, with the establishment of the Chow dynasty eleven hundred years before the birth of Christ. During this almost immeasurable lapse of time, the process of development was going on, involving such discoveries as the production of fire, the construction of houses, boats and wheeled vehicles, the cultivation of grain, and mutual communication by means of writing.
The father of Chinese history chose indeed to carry us back to the court of the Yellow Emperor, B.C. 2697, and to introduce us to his successors Yao and Shun and to the great Yu, who by his engineering skill had drained away a terrible inundation which some have sought to identify with Noah’s flood.
EMPEROR SHUN PLOWING.
This flood was in Shun’s reign. The waters we are told rose to so great a height that the people had to betake themselves to the mountains to escape death. Most of the provinces of the existing empire were inundated. The disaster arose, as many similar disasters, though of less magnitude, have since arisen, in consequence of the Yellow river bursting its bounds, and the great Yu was appointed to lead the waters back to their channel. With unremitting energy he set about his task, and in nine years succeeded in bringing the river under his control. During this period so absorbed was he in his work, that we are told he took heed neither of food nor clothing, and that thrice he passed the door of his house without once stopping to enter. At the completion of his labors he divided the empire into nine instead of twelve provinces, and tradition represents him as having engraved a record of his toils on a stone tablet on Mount Heng in the province of Hoopih. As a reward for the services he had rendered for the empire, he was invested with the principality of Hea, and after having occupied the throne conjointly with Shun for some years he succeeded that sovereign on his death in 2308 B.C.
VIEW FROM SUMMER PALACE, PEKING.
But all these things were in China’s “golden age,” the true record of which is shrouded for us in the obscurity of centuries. There were a few laws, but never any occasion to exact the penalties attached to misconduct. It was considered superfluous to close the house door at night, and no one would even pick up any lost property that lay in the high road. All was virtue, happiness and prosperity, the like of which has not since been known. The Emperor Shun was raised from the plow handle to the throne simply because of his filial piety, in recognition of which wild beasts used to come and voluntarily drag his plow for him through the furrowed fields, while birds of the air would hover round and guard his sprouting grain from the depredations of insects.