Pangu Creates the World

Tonight the wind slips softly through the window. It is cool on the skin and carries the smell of damp earth after the afternoon rain, and of young grass in the garden. It blows steadily and slowly, on and on, like the long breath of someone very large, somewhere very far away out in the dark. Now and then, from the edge of the sky, a distant rumble still rolls back, low and slow, like someone halfway through telling a story.

That wind begins with a very old story, so old that no one remembers when it began. Of all the stories Chinese people tell about the beginning of heaven and earth, this is the best known. Grandparents have passed it down to their grandchildren for generations beyond counting.

In those days, heaven and earth had not yet come apart. They were one thick, dense mass, black as ink. The whole mass lay curled up in the vast emptiness, silent and sealed tight, like a giant egg.

Inside that egg, a god was slowly taking shape. His name was Pangu. No one knows how long he lay still in that darkness. All that is told is that one day he stirred and stretched, and the shell around him cracked apart.

Pangu stood up in the broken chaos. He saw that heaven and earth were still stuck tight together, airless and dark. So he pushed the upper part up with his head and pressed the lower part down hard with his feet. Each time he pushed up a little, the sky rose a little higher. Each time he pressed down a little, the earth packed a little firmer.

Then he went on growing, day after day, his head still holding up the sky, his feet still pressing down the earth, without resting for a moment. Every day his body grew taller by about the height of a grown man standing straight. So every day the sky grew higher, and every day the earth grew firmer. The space between them grew wider and airier, like a house whose roof is raised a little higher each day. The old tellers say this went on for 18,000 long years, and the god never once left his place.

That is a very long time. Even a very long human life lasts only about 100 years. Yet Pangu stood there, holding up the sky and pressing down the earth, through one lifetime after another, hundreds of human lives in a row. He stayed patiently in one place until his great work was done.

In Vietnam, people tell of a giant god who piled up earth and stone into a pillar to prop up the sky. The story of Pangu is quite different. It has nothing of the kind, only a body that never stops growing, lifting the sky high by itself and pressing the earth low by itself.

Then one day the sky was as high as it could go, and the earth was as firm as it could be. The two were far enough apart that they could never stick together again. After 18,000 years of steady effort, the work of Pangu was finished.

The story goes on to say that when the great work was done, Pangu lay down to rest for the last time, in the space between heaven and earth that he himself had opened. At that very moment, something wondrous began. Part by part, his body turned into everything that makes up the world.

His breath spread out and became the wind and the clouds, sweeping far in every direction. His voice rang out as thunder, rolling through the high, wide sky. His head became the mountain ranges, rising one behind another and towering between earth and sky. The blood in his body became rivers and streams, winding into every land.

His flesh spread across the ground and became rich soil for plants to sprout in. His beard flew high into the sky and became the countless twinkling stars of the night. His skin and hair became grass and trees, flowers and leaves, turning the hills green. His bones and marrow became mountain rock and veins of precious minerals deep in the earth. His sweat fell and became the rain that cools every living thing.

And his eyes, the eyes that had watched the very first moment heaven and earth came apart, became the sun and the moon. His left eye became the blazing sun, and his right eye became the gentle moon. From then on, bright days and soft nights followed one another. The sun and the moon took turns lighting the world that Pangu had built with his whole life.

So the highest mountain anyone has ever seen, the river that flows past a village, the raindrops on a roof, the starlight every evening, all carry a piece of Pangu. The cool wind blowing past tonight is the same. It is the breath of the god, from that ancient time when heaven and earth were first opened.

And tonight, when the storm comes, a rumble will sound from very far away. Then it will spread across the whole sky, growing louder and deeper, as if it came all the way from the time heaven and earth first came apart. That thunder is the voice of Pangu, the god who gave his whole life to build heaven and earth, still ringing on and on, night after night.