Chinese mythology (in simplified Chinese中国神话) is one of the most valuable treasures of Chinese history and Chinese culture. These myths were passed from generation to generation through word of mouth or in writing in various forms such as written down in the fable, fiction, religion, dance, opera, etc. In some ways, these ancient myths would be treated as to be truth which actually happened in history. These myths could first be found in books like the Book of Mountains and Seas casual, the Book of History, Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Rites, Songs of the South, Lu Shi Chun Qiu, Mandarin, left Chuan, etc.

According to Chinese mythology scholar Yuan Ke’s classification, the myth of China we are talking about nowadays can be divided into the “myth”, “legend” and “God’s myth”, three categories. And from the Jin Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the history of Chinese literature has been that there are also “Ghost stories” or “genie fiction” categories about myths, which mainly talk about the “God”, “Ghost,” “monster,” “spirit” and “Strange”, “Buddha”, “Magic”, etc. All these myths were very well-known in the past and some of them were written in books and are still available nowadays. Some of them, like the Liaozhaizhiyi, even has been rearranged into movies. Therefore, Chinese mythology is really a very special type of Chinese literature and many of Chinese people are very fond of these myths.

In fact, almost every Chinese child would have heard about some Chinese myths from their parents when they were young. This is actually one of the ways mentioned above for passing mythology, which is by mouth.

Chinese mythology has a lot of characteristics, and one of them is that most of them are very creative and even some are regarded as “non-sense”. Moreover, the personality of the characters is quite clear and you would be able to identify the hero and the villains very easily. If you would like to study Chinese literature in a more interesting way, studying Chinese mythology would surely be a wise decision to make your first step!