The story of Fuxi

After the Wu–Yao war broke out, Fuxi took no part in the fighting itself. He travelled the parts of the world the war ran through and watched, seeing the losses on both sides and the country broken, and kept that time of disorder in mind.

When the war ended and both clans fell away, humankind — shaped from earth by Nüwa — multiplied and spread across the land. But people still ate raw flesh, knew nothing of farming and could not tell one season from another.

By the usual later account, Fuxi at this point was reborn among the human tribes and lived in the country of Chen, eating and sleeping with the people, watching the stars at sunrise and studying water and fire at sunset, indistinguishable from anyone else.

Fuxi often climbed to high places alone, looking down at the rise and fall of the land and the courses of the rivers, and up at the paths of sun, moon and stars, writing down their changes day by day; over years he felt out some of the rules by which the world turned.

One day, coming to the ford at Mengjin, he saw the water heave and a dragon-horse leap out of it, bearing a spiral pattern on its back. Holding his breath, Fuxi looked closely and copied the pattern down: this was the Hetu.

On another day, by the River Luo, he saw a divine turtle come up out of the water, and on its shell strange markings set in order. Fuxi wrote these down as well: this was the Luoshu.

Fuxi studied and worked over the two diagrams for a long while, and following the waxing and waning of yin and yang drew the eight trigrams, setting out the order of change in all things with a few plain lines. The people of his tribe did not understand at first, and he explained and demonstrated each of them.

Seeing that people hunted with bare hands and took uncertain catches, and seeing a spider’s web catch insects, Fuxi knotted cord into nets on the same principle and taught people to fish and hunt with them. Birds, beasts, fish and shrimp came more easily, and the tribe began to eat well.

Seeing too that the four seasons had their own order while people constantly missed the planting and the fishing times, he marked out the seasons by the paths of sun and moon, and taught them to work and rest by them; farming, fishing and hunting acquired a shape.

In his years as head of the tribe Fuxi also established the rites of marriage, teaching people to give hides as betrothal gifts and to marry in order, replacing the earlier disorder. The tribe grew, and its arrangements grew clear.

The same body of tradition also ties Fuxi to Dijun and to the later Heavenly Court, and treats his rebirth as a human sovereign as only one of many circulating versions. Whether Fuxi was a primordial Yao being reborn or a human born naturally, the accounts do not agree.

After long years at the head of the tribe Fuxi grew old. Seeing that Shennong knew the hundred herbs and could teach the growing of the five grains, and had the ability to take it on, he yielded the headship to him and left the affairs of the tribe alone.

Having yielded, Fuxi left the tribe and came to the Fire Cloud Cave, where mist hung and the plants grew thick, and settled there. He took no further part in the daily business of humankind, leaving behind only the trigrams, the nets and the marriage rites for those after him to follow.

Later tellers of the Three Sovereigns usually name Fuxi, Shennong and Xuanyuan, or Fuxi, Shennong and Suiren, with Fuxi first as the Heavenly Sovereign; but the lists and the order have never agreed, and this is only one of the commoner arrangements.

The Hetu, the Luoshu and the method of the trigrams that Fuxi handed down were studied and cited by cultivators and diviners for ages afterwards. The versions differ on how that transmission ran, but the name of the eight trigrams has never left the human world since.