Illustrated Myths & Legends of China by Huang Dehai

Author:Huang Dehai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Handscroll: Copy of Gu Kaizhi’s The Nymph of Luo River (detail, another part)

In the early morning, Yaoji often turned into a vague misty cloud that floated lazily between the high peaks and deep valleys; in the evening she turned from a cloud into graceful evening rain chattering plaintively with the green hilltops; at night she called out with deep emotion; the next day she became a floating morning cloud once more. Passers-by sometimes saw Yaoji, cheerless and lonely, and heard her quietly sobbing in the dark. Some had even seen the beauty of her true countenance, heard the tinkling ornaments at her waist and smelled the rare perfume of her body.

Yaoji loved the beauty of the scenery of Wushan and loved, too, the simple laboring people who lived at the foot of the mountain. Every day, she stood atop the towering precipices gazing into the distance and watching the boats coming and going through the gorges of Qutangxia, Wuxia, and Xilingxia, and every day she dispatched several hundred sacred crows with orders to circle above the valleys of the gorges, watch over those coming and going and protect the peace of earth and water.

One year, Ba and Shu were inundated by a huge flood, hardly encountered in history before. Yu the Great was entrusted with the task of taming the waters. Boring through mountains and opening rivers, he came to the foot of Wushan, ready to build ditches to release the flood. Unwittingly, he angered the toad spirit that had dwelt hidden on the top of Mount Wushan for many years and the toad used magic to impede his progress through the mountain. Yu the Great, caught unprepared, was thrown into disarray. Prompted by the locals he decided to seek the help of Yaoji, the goddess of Wushan. Yaoji admired the fact that Yu the Great did not seek revenge but sought compassion for victims who had been forced to leave hearth and home. She bestowed on him the magic that allowed him to command spirits and demons, and presented him with a heavenly book that controlled wind and water, so that he could subdue the toad spirit and stop the tempest. Later, Yaoji dispatched her attendant ministers to blast a gorge through Wushan to allow the floodwaters in Ba and Shu to escape through the Wushan gorge and pour majestically into the great river.

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