Ong Chay and Ba Chay

In the highlands where the Hmong live, the ground seldom lies still and flat. It rises and falls, it heaps itself up, it folds into layer upon layer of mountains. One peak rests its head on the shoulder of the next, and on they run, all the way to the horizon. In the early morning, mist settles in the deep folds of the land, as if gathered in the palm of a hand. By noon, sunlight spreads gold across the tilted slopes. It is a vast stretch of country, yet every part of it looks as if some hand had once squeezed it and pressed it into a tighter shape.

The Hmong have an old story about those folds of mountains. Grandparents have passed it down to their grandchildren for generations, beside the fire on long nights in the mountains. It tells of the two beings who made the sky and the earth at the very beginning. Their names were Ông Chày and Bà Chày.

The story says that in those days the universe was still dim and formless. There was no up and no down, not a single line to divide one from the other. There was only a vast, silent chaos. Yet in the midst of it, the King of Heaven, Chử Lầu, was already there. He looked out over the four dark directions. He wanted a sky there to cover everything above, and an earth below for all things to rest on. So he called Ông Chày and Bà Chày to him and gave each of them a great task.

Ông Chày was given the sky to make. Bà Chày was given the earth. The two obeyed the King of Heaven. Each withdrew to one side and quietly set to work.

Ông Chày made the sky. He raised it very high, then bent it into a dome turned downward, round and neat, like a huge conical hat set over the empty space. Because the sky curved, it closed inward and held just the space in the middle. It was beautiful and graceful, but precisely because it curved, it turned out narrow.

Bà Chày made the earth. She spread it out very wide and very flat. She spread and spread in every direction, until no edge could be seen however far one looked. The earth lay smooth, open and vast. When she had finished, she stepped back to look, and she was very pleased with her vast earth.

But when the dome of sky was set over the earth, the two found that something did not fit. The sky curved, so its dome was narrow. The earth was flat, so it spread wide. The earth was wider than the sky. Its edges kept spilling out, poking right past the rim of the dome, and there was no way to tuck them all neatly underneath.

It was like setting a small round pot lid on a very large tray. The lid closes over only a small patch, while the tray stretches wide on every side. However the lid is turned, the rim of the tray still sticks out. The sky and the earth at the very beginning were just like that. One could not cover the other.

So Ông Chày and Bà Chày sat down together to talk it over. They could hardly take everything apart and start again. The sky was already curved so beautifully that it would be a shame to undo it. That left only one way. They would press the earth narrower, until it fit the dome of sky exactly. So the two put their hands together and began to shape the earth.

They pressed the earth from its outer edges in toward the middle. They squeezed it until it shrank, until it grew tighter, until it was small enough to match the dome above. But land that had been flat and wide would not stay flat once it was squeezed narrow. Pushed and crowded, with no room left to stretch out, the earth wrinkled. Here it bulged up, there it sank down. In one place it folded into a crease, in another it twisted into a ridge.

And wherever the earth was pushed up and wrinkled like that, a mountain rose. Where much earth was pushed together, a towering mountain grew. Where little was pushed, a low hill formed. The cracks that sank deep between the wrinkles became valleys and streambeds, and wide stretches of water lying among the mountains. The more they pressed, the narrower the earth became, and the more mountains rose up.

Only when the earth fit the dome of sky exactly did the two stop. Now the sky curved above and the earth lay snug below, and no edge of the earth stuck out anymore. The sky covered just enough, and the earth fit neatly inside. There was just one catch. From then on, the earth could never again be as smooth as it had been at the beginning. It carried every wrinkle from the time it was pressed to fit the sky.

Those wrinkles are the very mountains where the Hmong live. Villages huddle against the slopes. Terraced fields rise in tier after tier around the foot of the mountains. Stone paths wind up and down along the folded back of the land. People here are born among those folds and grow up there. They go up to their hillside fields and down to market, and all their lives they know the rise and fall of the land of their home.

So the Hmong still tell it this way. The mountains of their homeland did not rise and fall in endless ranges by chance. They are the handprints of Ông Chày and Bà Chày from long, long ago, who pressed the earth to fit the sky. Since then, every fold of earth has been a mountain, and every sunken crack a valley with a stream running across it. Today, anyone standing in the highlands can look up at one range of mountains resting on the next, running on all the way to the clouds. Whoever does is looking straight back at the moment when the sky and the earth began, when a wide, open earth was pressed in to fit a dome of sky.