This medicine could actually help people get rid of death, that means with the medicine, Hou Yi could live forever. However, Chang’e witnessed the bad behavior of her husband and she knew that if Hou Yi became long live, it would not be good for all the people because the present Hou Yi was no longer the heroic Hou Yi who bravely shot down the suns. Therefore, she stole the medicine and Hou Yi discovered it and chased Chang’e for the medicine. All in a sudden, Chang’e took all the medicines and she discovered that her body was lighter and lighter and she gradually left the land and flew to the sky. In Chinese legend, Chang’e flew to the moon and therefore, she met a rabbit. Therefore, till now, some people think that shadows in the moon are actually the shadow of Chang’e as well as the moon rabbit.

As Chang’e stole all the medicines, Hou Yi also could not live forever and therefore, soon after Chang’e left him, Hou Yi died.

Of course, this is just one of the most famous legends of ancient China and there are also a lot of more interesting and dramatic myths and legends from ancient Chinese. These legends add a lot of ideas to present storytellers of China and some directors even use these legends to create a lot of movies and dramas.

However, talking about the Hou Yi in the Yao Period, we could see a quite interesting story. According to this legend, in the past, the world had actually 10 suns. These suns were responsible for shining the world in different period of time and they were quite obedient indeed. However, one day, they got bored and they were trying to figure out what funny things to do. One of the suns got an idea suddenly and he suggested that all ten of them could rise together and shine the world together. This got the consent of all the suns and thus, they rose together.

As you might have imagined, having 10 times of normal light and 10 times of hotness, everything in the world changed suddenly. The lands cracked due to the thermal attack, and many people could not survive under such hot weather and Hou Yi, the strong man, was very angry with the misbehavior of the suns. Therefore, he tried to use arrows to shoot down the suns. One by one, the suns were shot down and there was only one sun left. He knew his fault and begged for the forgiveness of the people. Actually, people also know that without all the suns, they would not be able to get light for farming and therefore, they forgave the fault of the sun. After that, Hou Yi was praised and chosen to be the leader of the country.

For the God, the first place where his name was seen is in the Book. From this source, he might be existed in 700BC or earlier. From many literatures, God was given a lot of “human” interpretation. Documented in Zhuangzi chaos, the God was regarded as the most “human” image. Of course, one thing that needs to be clarified is that the “God” mentioned here is not the God of Christian. It is just the Chinese God.

The Sky is also known as the King Sky. Since ancient Chinese depended on farming heavily, what the sky happen would affect their lives a lot and therefore, they would regard the Sky as one of the creators of the world. Thus, Emperor would usually call themselves as “Son of the Sky” and gain the support of the people.

Nu Wa first appeared in Songs of the South Liezi and she probably existed in 350 BC or earlier. In the myth, she is the image of half-human, half snake, and together with Fuxi she was the ancestor of mankind. When there was once a very severe disaster happened in China, people said that she once used a lot of stones to repair the problem.

The earliest historical record about the Pangu comes from the whole of the Three Kingdoms. According to it, he opened the world with a broken axe and he used his dead body, upon his death, to create all the things in the world nowadays.

Jade Emperor is usually regarded as the leader of all Chinese god and goddess.

Talking about the miscellaneous myths, the scolars think that the myths were the combination and fusion of many original myths between different groups of people and after generations of transformation, the story becomes richer in content, and may also be changed beyond recognition.

About the continuation of legend, people believe that the myth of the ancient people recorded the life experience of themselves and also the perception of the subjective view of things, which reflect the social development. For example, if people were very dissatisfied with the performance of the government, the myths they left would probably be about some very strong heroes which reflect their desires. Those heroes might be too strong that their strength is beyond our imagination (like they could run as fast as a tiger). Then, this would be what we called “exaggerate” about Chinese myths.

Lastly, about the sacred myth, people believe that ancient Chinese would have these sacred myths because they had little knowledge towards the nature. If they know nothing about the nature and they do not know how to explain some of the phenomenon and therefore they would regard them as very special and myths.

In fact, myths, legends and god’s myths have slightly difference. First, myths usually refer to the mythology about nature before the Qin Dynasty. They are more focused on describing the relationship between human and nature.On the other hand, legends usually refer to some more factual stories passed orally. They are about some things about heroes that actually happened in history.

Lastly, God’s myths usually refer to some myths which help spread religious messages. In Chinese, Confuses belief is very popular and there would therefore be myths saying that having Confuses belief would help people become god and would enjoy a very peaceful life when they die.

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!

Yes, as mentioned above, Yuan Song actually refers to the opera during the Yuan Dynasty. Then, you might ask, what are the special things about these operas so that they are so famous and even become a branch of Chinese Literature? Well, actually, Yuan Songs follow a lot of rules and patterns and there are a lot of special common characteristics among these songs.

For Yuan Songs, music is added to the opera and the style of the music was very special. There are 4 very famous artists writing Yuan Songs and they are generally all about the Yuan Songs.

In fact, these 4 people have slightly difference in their writing styles and therefore, they separately had a group of supporters from past to now. However, actually, to many people, these 4 people are in the same level and there would not be any ranking among them.

Talking about Yuan Songs, one of the most important characteristic is that the operas would usually spread a certain kind of messages. For example, there would be message about Chinese moral sense and there are a lot of other things. This is also a characteristic for Chinese Literature, that is Chinese artists would usually be responsible for spreading positive messages to the public. They would not try to say something violent or bad. Instead, they would write something like “The Hero Would Defeat Their Enemy”. Moreover, you could hardly see that bad guys would receive good final ending except they turn good. This is, therefore, one of the characteristics of Chinese culture.

Nowadays, more and more people would appreciate Yuan Songs because they are relatively more interesting that Poems and Words as they could be watched lively. Of course, in the future, it is expected that this form of Chinese art would be appreciated in a larger extend.

In fact, the form of Word Poetry in the past was different from that in Song. In the past, a lot of restrictions were added to the art and this made the Words came out become not very creative.

However, during the Song Dynasty, the great artist, Su Shi, invented a lot of new styles and patterns for poems and became one of the most famous Chinese artists. When talking about Poems, Li Bai, Du Fu would come to many people’s mind but when talking about Words, Su Shi would surely come to many people’s mind. Actually, Su Shi is one of the 8 Great Artists in Tang and Song Dynasties.

In fact, Su Shi was a government official. However, since he refused to cooperate with the other officials in the government, he was not supported and a lot of people said Su Shi was not very faithful to the Emperor. Therefore, he was sent to be a very remote district and given a very small grade of position.

However, just because Su Shi had such unpleasant experience, he had a lot of things to express through his Words. He expressed his concern about the government and he expressed the missing feeling towards his brother. All these made Su Shi create touching Words and shocked the whole art world in China. These Words are passed from generation and generation and many of them are still very well-known nowadays.

Of course, besides Su Shi, there are also a lot of great and famous Words writers and many of them are very well-known nowadays. During the late Song Dynasty, Words became more and more popular and it had become a tool for people to express their sad feeling towards the government’s weak performance in wars.

Most of the poems in Tang Dynasty were included in the “Full Tang Poems Collection”. However, other collections were established and different versions were found. Among these versions, the most well-known collection which is very famous nowadays is the “Three Hundred Tang Poems.”

In fact, according to the time of the creation of the poems, the Tang poems could be divided into four phrases, namely the Early Period, the Prosperous Period, the Middle Period and the Late Period.

During the Early Period, the Tang poems were mainly about the luxurious life of the wealthy people. The use of words was very beautiful and elegant, but there were not much meaning behind.

During the Prosperous Period, many poets came to be known. Among them, Li Bai is regarded as one of the most famous ones and he had written thousands of poems in different topics. His poems are very elegant and would make people fall into deep imagination. On the other hand, Du Fu was also very famous for writing realistic poems. He wrote a lot of poems about the life of the poor people in that time and in the poems, you would be able to see a lot of fine descriptions and you would feel very angry towards the weak government at that time.

During the Middle and Late period, poems were a bit different from those in the above 2 periods. The structure was more or less the same, but the style was quite different. One of the reasons is that the Tang Dynasty had turned to be weak and more and more people would decide to leave the government and live in some rural areas. Some poets also did that and they discovered that rural areas had a lot of natural beautiful scenery and they fell in love with them and created a lot of poems to praise these views.

In fact, as mentioned above, the Songs of the South was composed by poets from Chu Country in the Warring States Period. Therefore, most of the songs recorded in this book mainly were South folk songs, ancient myths at the southern China, etc.

In the past, poems would have 4 words in a line. However, the Songs of the South had a lot of poems which broke this rule. It therefore marked the development of poems and it was very significant to Chinese literature. For the poems in the Songs of the South, there were poems with different structures and also the number of words used in different lines in a poem would be different. Moreover, there was no fixed style for people to write poems in this period. Therefore, it allowed a lot of creativities for poets to write.

In the book, poets would use different kinds of techniques to write poems, like the personification, metaphor, etc. All these allowed poets to write freely and express their feelings more easily.

During the term of Chu Jong Noble in Chu Country, wars were started and the country conquered a lot of other small countries, and some of the people even reached the northern part of the country. This sped up the exchange of culture between people from the north and the south and such fusion of culture would also be seen in the poems in the Songs of the South.

Therefore, this book could be regarded as the first book which has a lot of originality added and the poems were really elegant. Apart from the tidiness of the poems, there were fewer restrictions seen and therefore, we could be able to see more emotional poems.

In fact, the original forms of Chinese literature were folk songs and legends and also historical events. Gradually, it became in the form of articles, poems, songs, etc. After hundreds and even thousands of time, people added a lot of different features to these articles and literature, like parallel structure, personification, etc.

Talking about Chinese literature, the first collection should be definitely the Book of Songs (in simplified Chinese诗经). “The Book of Songs” is China’s earliest collection of poetry. This book was actually originally called “Poems”, having a total of 305 poems. Therefore, sometimes people would call this book the “Poetry 300”. Since the Han Dynasty, the Confucian regarded this book as the classic book.

In fact, writers of the poems in the Book of Songs were all unknown because most of the poems could not be traced back anymore. However, since Mao Chang, a scholar, had tried to write books about how to interpret the meaning and style of the poems in the book, some people also regard this Book of Songs the “Mao Book”.

Anyway, talking about the writers of the poems in this book, although the exact names of them could not be traced, we still know that these writers come mainly from the Yellow River Basin, the eastern part of Shanxi and Gansu Province, as well as the Hebei Province, east Shandong, and also the Jianghan basin.

“The Book of Songs”, according to the history, were basically formed during the Western Zhou Dynasty. The latest work was put into the book in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, which means the work in the book came across about 600 years of time.

According to some books, Confucius once edited the book and chose 300 poems for the book. However, this was not very correct, because when he was only 10, the basic structure of the book had been formed and so it might just be a fake thing.