Social Sciences in China, 2024

Vol. 45 , No. 4, 2024

 

A Creator of the World and a Counter-Myth: Rereading “Mending Heaven”

(Abstract)

 

Wang Hui

 

In the story “Mending Heaven,” Nüwa was an imperfect creator and re-creator who was banished from the origin myths. Her action led to a series of beginnings: the beginnings of space, time, the human race, and the human actions of tears and laughter, as well as the beginnings of the turning point of “possession,” as human history began its journey through jealousy, hatred, begging, scheming, trickery and warfare, and produced the moral order that legitimized this chaotic process. The story “Mending Heaven” is not only a creation myth, but also a story of saving civilization from the “history of civilization”—what Nüwa re-established in this chaos was not a new stage of the cycle of the Five Virtues (Five Elements), but another new world that could not be concealed under the appearance of a sequential cycle. The reinterpretation of the image of Nüwa is a response to multiple theories of creation mythology and world order by Chinese and Western scholars.

 

Keywords: “Mending Heaven,” creation story, anti-myth, history of civilization