A RECORD OF ALL THINGS UNDER HEAVENAs gathered from the oldest accounts that remain
PROLOGUE — CHAPTER ONEThe Index — A Record of All That Is Contained Herein
This is a record of the Chinese world.
Not the China of maps and borders. The China that existed before maps were drawn. The China in which heaven had thirty-three levels, hell had ten courts, the earth was supported by a great tortoise, and the sky still bore the marks of where it had been repaired.
This record is organized as the world itself was organized — beginning before the beginning, moving through creation, through the age of gods and heroes, through the ordering of heaven and the establishment of hell, through the creatures that walked between worlds and the spirits that inhabited every mountain, river, tree, and threshold.
What follows is the complete index of all that this record contains.
Each entry listed here is given its own chapter. The chapter contains everything that is known about that subject — every variation, every contradicting account, every version from every region. Where accounts agree, the agreement is noted. Where accounts disagree, both are recorded. Nothing has been resolved for the convenience of the reader. The world was not convenient.
The index is long. This is because the world was large.
PART ONE — THE BEFORE
Wuji — without limit, without boundary, without name. The state that preceded existence.
Hundun — the primordial chaos. The undivided. The thing that was bored to death by two emperors who meant well.
Taiyi — the Great One — and what it gave birth to before anything else existed.
Qi — the breath that became all substance, all matter, all energy.
The separation — how Yin became Yin and Yang became Yang, and what the world looked like in the moment before they were different.
The Three Pure Ones — Yuanshi Tianzun, Lingbao Tianzun, Daode Tianzun — the universe in the act of becoming conscious of itself.
The Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — and how they govern all things that came after.
PART TWO — CREATION
Pangu — he who slept inside the egg for eighteen thousand years, split it open, held the sky above his head and the earth beneath his feet, and when he died became everything.
How Pangu's body became the world — the complete accounting. His breath. His eyes. His blood. His bones. His parasites.
Nuwa — she who walked the silent earth after Pangu died and could not bear the silence.
The clay figures — how the first humans were made by hand, and what that making cost.
The string dragged through mud — how the common people came into being, and what this says about the world they were born into.
The figures that melted in the rain — where sickness entered the world, and how it has never left.
Fuxi — Nuwa's brother and counterpart — the inventor of the eight trigrams, the fishing net, the first music.
Gonggong — the god of water who broke the sky because he lost a fight and could not accept the losing.
The repair of heaven — five colored stones, the feet of the great turtle, the ash of reeds, and the tilt that was never corrected.
Why the sky leans northwest and why the rivers of China run southeast into the sea — the consequence of an imperfect repair that has lasted ten thousand years.
PART THREE — HEAVEN AND ITS ORDERING
The Jade Emperor — Yu Huang Dadi — how he earned his throne through ten thousand trials and what he has ruled since.
The Lingxiao Treasure Hall — the celestial court, its officials, its structure, its procedures.
The thirty-three heavens — their names, their residents, their function in the ordering of all things.
The celestial bureaucracy — how heaven was organized as a mirror of the imperial court below.
Xiwangmu — the Queen Mother of the West — the Peach Garden, the three thousand year peach, the six thousand year peach, the nine thousand year peach, and what eating each one gives.
The Peach Banquet — who was invited, who was not invited, and what happened as a consequence of the oversight.
The Jade Pool — Yaochi — the immortal banquets, who attended, what was served.
The Four Dragon Kings — Ao Guang of the East Sea, Ao Qin of the South Sea, Ao Run of the West Sea, Ao Shun of the North Sea — their courts, their treasures, their disputes with mortals.
Taisui — the Grand Duke Jupiter — the god of the year, who must not be disturbed, what happens when he is.
Lei Gong — the god of thunder — his drum, his chisel, his blue face, and why he appears where lightning strikes.
Dianmu — the goddess of lightning — her two mirrors, how she aims them.
Feng Bo — the Earl of Wind — the goatskin bag, what escapes when it is opened carelessly.
Yu Shi — the Master of Rain — his duties, his tools, his relationship with drought.
Nezha — the lotus child — born already at war, who dismembered himself rather than cause his father harm, and was reborn from lotus flowers with a different body.
Erlang Shen — the god with the third eye, the god of engineering, the nephew who refused to submit, the one who fought the Monkey King to a draw.
The Heavenly Army — how it was organized before the Monkey King disrupted it and after.
PART FOUR — THE EARTH GODS
Tudi Gong — the Earth God — the lowest, the most numerous, the most local. One for every district, every village, every field. The god closest to the ground.
Chenghuang — the City God — protector of walls and moats, keeper of local order, judge of those who die within his jurisdiction.
Zao Jun — the Kitchen God — who watches everything the family does and says, and once a year ascends to heaven to report it. What is placed on his lips before he goes, and why.
Menshen — the Door Gods — two accounts, two pairs of guardians, one threshold. Shen Tu and Yu Lei. Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong. Why there are two versions and what each version says about the house that displays it.
Caishen — the God of Wealth — his five roads, his tiger, his black face, his many manifestations across different traditions.
Yue Lao — the Old Man Under the Moon — who holds the red thread, what happens when it tangles, why it cannot be cut.
Mazu — who she was before the sea claimed her. The girl from Fujian who could project her spirit across the water. How she became the patron of all who sail.
Guan Yu — general in life, god in death — patron of warriors, patron of merchants, patron of sworn brotherhood. How one man became god of contradictory things and why it makes sense.
Wen Chang — the God of Literature — keeper of the records of scholars, administrator of the imperial examinations in heaven.
Zhong Kui — who was denied the first place prize in life because of his ugly face, who killed himself on the palace steps, who was given in death the title that was withheld in life — the demon-queller.
The Household Gods — the god of the bed, the god of the well, the god of the privy, the god of the hearth. The minor deities that inhabit the private spaces and require small regular acknowledgment.
PART FIVE — THE UNDERWORLD AND ITS COURTS
Diyu — the Earth Prison — its names, its geography, its relationship to the Yellow Springs and the Land of Shade.
The Ghost Gate — the entry point — the pass that is required, what happens to souls who arrive without it.
Ox-Head and Horse-Face — Niutou Mamian — the first faces every dead person sees.
Black and White Impermanence — Heibai Wuchang — the two who carry chains and black and white hats and arrive when death arrives.
The Mirror Platform — where every soul stands and watches the complete record of its own life reflected without omission.
Wang Xiang Tai — the Home-Viewing Pavilion — where every soul is permitted one final sight of the living before proceeding.
The First Court — King Qinguang — who holds the register of all births, deaths, and lifespans. Who receives every soul first.
The Second Court — King Chujiang — the Ice Hell — who punishes dishonest brokers, fraudulent trustees, and doctors who practiced without knowledge.
The Third Court — King Songdi — the Black Rope Hell — unjust officials, forgers, slanderers, and those who caused discord between families.
The Fourth Court — King Wuguan — who punishes the miserly rich, dishonest tradesmen, and those who hoarded cures and did not share them.
The Fifth Court — King Yanluo — the Wailing Hell — who was demoted from the First Court for excessive mercy, whose skin is red, whose path ends in Buddhahood.
The Sixth Court — King Diancheng — the Grand Wailing Hell — the City of Innocent Deaths, where those who died before their time are held.
The Seventh Court — King Taishan — the Noisy Hell — who punishes those who violated graves and those who sold or consumed human flesh.
The Eighth Court — King Dushi — the Suffocation Hell — who punishes the unfilial, those who failed in their duties to parents and elders.
The Ninth Court — King Pingden — the Avici Hell of the Iron Web — the most severe of punishments for the most severe of sins.
The Tenth Court — King Zhuanlun — who decides all reincarnation. Sex. Lifespan. Family. Wealth. Every condition of the next life is assigned here before the soul crosses the bridge.
The Naihe Bridge — three fingers wide, no railings, one hundred feet above the river of blood. How a soul crosses depends on how it lived.
Meng Po — who she was before she became the one who brews the soup of forgetting. Why she made the soup. What is in it. What it takes.
The Six Paths of Reincarnation — the heaven path, the demi-god path, the human path, the animal path, the hungry ghost path, the hell path — how the assignment is made.
Hell money and paper offerings — the logic of burning things for the dead — what arrives on the other side and in what condition.
PART SIX — THE FLOW BETWEEN WORLDS
How heaven, earth, and hell communicate — the celestial bureaucracy in motion, the annual cycle of reports and inspections.
The Kitchen God's annual journey — the honey, the sticky cake, the ascending smoke, the report delivered, the return on New Year's Eve.
How prayers travel — from the mouth of the mortal to the ear of the local god to the desk of the celestial ministry.
The festivals of the dead — when the gates of hell open, how long they remain open, what is permitted during the opening, what is not.
Then — heaven fell silent. The emissaries stopped coming. The celestial court ceased its correspondence with the world below. Only the lowest gods noticed — the Kitchen God, the Earth God, the City God — because they stood closest to humans and felt the absence first. This chapter is the last chapter of the prologue. It is also the first chapter of the story.
PART SEVEN — THE AGE BEFORE HEAVEN'S RULE
The Three August Ones — the first rulers of the world before the celestial bureaucracy was organized.
Fuxi — the trigrams, the fishing net, the domestication of animals, the first music, the first calendar.
Shennong — the Divine Farmer — who tasted every plant that grew to discover which healed and which killed, and who was poisoned seventy times in a single day and survived all seventy.
The Yellow Emperor — Huang Di — who unified the tribes by war, who invented the calendar, the compass, and silk, who fought Chi You at the Battle of Zhuolu and established order over the whole of the known world.
Chi You — the war god with eighty-one brothers, copper heads and iron foreheads, who ate sand and stone, whose fog covered the battlefield until the Yellow Emperor built a compass to navigate it.
The aftermath of Zhuolu — what became of Chi You after his defeat, where his head fell, where his body fell, and what grows in those places still.
PART EIGHT — THE FIRST GIFTS
Youchao — who watched birds build nests and taught humanity to build shelters in trees, and later on the ground, and what this changed about how humans lived.
Sui Ren — who made fire by drilling wood, who gave it to humanity, and what fire gave back to the world it entered.
Cangjie — the four-eyed scribe — who invented writing, and on the day the first characters were complete, heaven rained millet and the ghosts wept, because both heaven and the dead understood what writing would mean.
Gonggong — told again here, in the context of what he took from the world when he broke the pillar, and what was given back by Nuwa's repair.
Kuafu — who decided to chase the sun and catch it, who ran until he drank two rivers dry, who died of thirst within sight of the great forest to the north, whose staff became that forest when he dropped it.
PART NINE — THE GREAT MYTHS
The Ten Suns — the ten sons of Di Jun and Xi He, how they were supposed to take turns crossing the sky, what happened when they all rose together, and what the world looked like when every sun burned at once.
Hou Yi the archer — who shot nine suns from the sky at the command of the Jade Emperor, who spared the tenth because a crow flew out of it, who was a god made mortal as punishment, who died at the hands of his own student.
Chang'e — the wife of Hou Yi — the elixir of immortality, why she swallowed it alone, the cold palace on the moon, the jade rabbit, the toad, what she sees when she looks down at the earth every night.
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl — Niulang and Zhinü — the loom, the stolen robe, the marriage, the separation, the river of stars, the bridge of magpies that forms one night each year.
Da Yu and the Great Flood — Gun who tried to stop the flood by blocking it and failed, Yu who succeeded by digging channels, who worked so long his hands grew no nails and his feet grew calluses, who passed his own home three times without entering.
Sun Wukong — from the stone egg on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, through the underwater palace of the Dragon King, through the courts of hell, through the heavenly peach garden, through the war with heaven, to the Buddha's palm, to the journey west, to Buddhahood. The complete account.
The Zodiac Race — the twelve animals, the river, the rat's trick, the cat's betrayal, why the cat and the rat are enemies, and what each animal's position in the cycle means for those born under it.
PART TEN — THE FENGSHEN
King Zhou of Shang — how the last emperor of a dynasty becomes a tyrant, and what the records say about whether he was always this way or became it.
Daji — the fox spirit — what Nuwa originally sent her to do, what she chose to do instead, and the difference between those two things.
Bi Gan — the loyal minister who was asked to prove his loyalty by removing his own heart, who walked away from the surgery, who died only when a woman selling vegetables told him a man with no heart cannot live.
Jiang Ziya — who fished with a straight hook three feet above the water for years, who said he was fishing for a king, who found one, who became the architect of the new celestial order.
The Register of 365 Names — how the list of new gods was assembled, who was placed on it, who was left off, and how the celestial bureaucracy was built from the bodies of the war dead.
The war between the Chan Sect and the Jie Sect — the two schools of immortals, what they fought over, and what the mortal world suffered during the fighting of those above.
The Fengshen Platform — where the dead received their titles. How the celestial administration that governs heaven was assembled from corpses.
PART ELEVEN — THE FOUR GREAT CREATURES
The Dragon — Long — nine types, nine sons, each type with a different domain. Not a monster. The lord of water, rain, rivers, and imperial authority. What the dragon means in Chinese understanding compared to what it means elsewhere.
The Phoenix — Fenghuang — male and female, the union of the two birds that became one name. What its appearance means for the ruler on the throne. What its absence means.
The Qilin — who appears only in times of peace and righteous rule, whose hooves harm no living grass, whose body combines the features of many animals. What it announced when it appeared. The last recorded sighting.
The Black Tortoise — Xuanwu — the tortoise and the snake wound together, guardian of the north, symbol of longevity, endurance, and the slow accumulation of strength.
The Four Symbols — Azure Dragon of the East, White Tiger of the West, Vermilion Bird of the South, Black Tortoise of the North — the four directional guardians, their associations, their seasons, their elements.
PART TWELVE — THE SHANHAIJING AND ITS CREATURES
The Shanhaijing — the Classic of Mountains and Seas — the oldest catalogue of the world's creatures, landscapes, and peoples. What it is, who compiled it, what it claims to be, and why it has never been fully explained.
Taotie — the face with no body — greed made physical, the mask that devours, the image on the bronze vessels of the Shang dynasty.
Hundun the creature — not the primordial chaos but a creature of the same name — six legs, four wings, no face, no apertures — who dances and sings and has no malice.
The Jian Bird — who has one eye and one wing — two must find each other and fly together or neither can fly at all.
Bashe — the great snake — who swallows an elephant whole and requires three years to digest it before it spits out the bones.
Pixiu — the winged lion who can eat anything and cannot excrete anything — its punishment, its function as a keeper of wealth.
Bi Fang — the fire bird with one leg and one eye — whose arrival announces fire, who the records say caused the great fires of ancient times.
Longma — the dragon-horse — who emerged from the Yellow River carrying the eight trigrams on its back, which Fuxi saw and used to devise the basis of all Chinese philosophy.
Qiongqi — the winged tiger who devours the righteous and rewards the wicked — one of the Four Perils of ancient China.
Bai Ze — the white ox who could speak human language — who appeared to the Yellow Emperor, who described every supernatural creature in existence, nine thousand and ninety of them, and what was written down.
The Peng Bird — the fish that lived in the northern darkness, that grew until its back was like a mountain, that transformed into a bird whose wings darkened the sky when it flew, that flew ninety thousand li before it rested. What this transformation means.
PART THIRTEEN — ADDITIONAL CREATURES AND SPIRITS
Tiangou — the heavenly dog — who swallows the sun and moon during eclipses, why it spits them back out, and what the people on earth did while waiting.
Nian — the beast that came every year — what it feared, what those fears gave to the world, and why those things are still done.
Jiangshi — the hopping corpse — what causes a body to become one, what stops it, the nine types recognized in the old records.
E Gui — the hungry ghosts — who becomes one, how they suffer, what they need and cannot have.
The Fox Spirits — Huli Jing — their nine ranks corresponding to their nine tails, how they cultivate, how long it takes to gain each tail, what they can do and what they cannot do, their relationship with humans across a thousand years of records.
The Snake Spirit — Bai Suzhen — who loved a human man, who maintained that form for a human lifetime, who was imprisoned beneath the Leifeng Pagoda for loving outside the boundaries of her nature.
Yaoguai — the full taxonomy of Chinese supernatural beings — the difference between yao, gui, guai, mo, and xie — what each word means, what kind of being each word describes, and why the distinctions matter.
PART FOURTEEN — THE EIGHT IMMORTALS
The Eight Immortals — who they are, why there are eight, what they travel on, and what their crossing of the sea demonstrates about the nature of individual ability.
Zhongli Quan — the fat immortal with the fan that can resurrect the dead. His history before immortality.
Lu Dongbin — the scholar who passed the celestial examination, who carries a demon-slaying sword, who failed to complete his own discipleship and completed it anyway.
Zhang Guolao — the old man who rode his donkey backwards, who folded the donkey like paper when he dismounted, who claimed to be the chaos of primordial creation.
Li Tieguai — whose soul left his body and returned to find it burned by an impatient student, who had to inhabit a dead beggar's body, who has carried the iron crutch since.
He Xiangu — the only woman among the eight — who ate powdered mica on the instruction of a divine figure, who floated above the ground after, who was called to heaven and chose the path of the immortal.
Lan Caihe, Cao Guojiu, Han Xiangzi — the basket of flowers, the jade castanets, the flute that makes flowers bloom — their histories and their domains.
PART FIFTEEN — THE GREAT TEACHERS AND HEROES
Ji Gong — the drunken monk who broke every monastic rule, who ate meat and drank wine, who helped the poor and the wronged, who was an Arhat in disguise and whose disguise was his truest self.
Hua Mulan — who disguised herself as a man and fought in her father's place for twelve years, who was never discovered, who returned home and put on her own clothes again.
The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains — who began moving two mountains with a hoe and a basket, who said his sons would continue after he died and their sons after them, until the mountains were gone. And heaven moved them.
The Dragon Gate — the waterfall that carp attempt to leap, the ones that succeed becoming dragons, the ones that fail returning to the river. What this story has always been about.
PART SIXTEEN — THE FOUR GREAT FOLKTALES
Lady Meng Jiang — who wept at the Great Wall when she learned her husband had died during its construction, whose tears collapsed a section of it, who found his bones and buried them, and what she did when the emperor tried to make her his consort.
The Legend of the White Snake — Bai Suzhen and Xu Xian — the thousand-year-old snake spirit who loved a human, the monk Fahai who could not permit it, the flood that came, the pagoda at West Lake, what endures after the pagoda falls.
Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai — the Butterfly Lovers — the girl who studied as a man, the man who loved her without knowing what she was, the death, the grave, the butterflies that emerged.
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl — told again here as a folktale, in the version passed down in households rather than in temples.
PART SEVENTEEN — THE SACRED PLACES
Kunlun Mountain — the axis of the world, the ladder between heaven and earth, the residence of Xiwangmu, the place where the immortal peaches grow and the jade pool reflects nothing that is mortal.
Penglai — the immortal island in the eastern sea — the five islands, what grows there, what it costs to reach it, and how many ships were sent and never returned.
Qin Shi Huang — the first emperor — who sent fleets east to find Penglai and the elixir of immortality, who spent a dynasty's treasury pursuing what could not be bought, who was killed by the mercury his alchemists told him would make him live forever.
Fusang — the great tree in the eastern sea — where the ten suns rested before their turn to cross the sky, the tree that burned when all ten rose together.
Fengdu — the ghost city — the city of the dead above ground — its temples, its gates, its role in the passage between worlds.
PART EIGHTEEN — THE FESTIVALS AND THEIR ORIGINS
Chinese New Year — the full origin of the Nian beast, the color red, the firecrackers, the reunion dinner, the dumplings, the red envelopes, and why all of it is done on the same night every year.
The Lantern Festival — the fifteenth night of the first month — the story of the crane that was killed by hunters, the Jade Emperor's rage, and the lanterns that were lit to make the earth look like it was burning.
Qingming — the festival of tomb-sweeping — the origin in the story of Jie Zitui, who cut flesh from his own leg to feed a hungry lord, who refused the reward when the lord became king, who was burned to death by accident in a forest and never found.
The Dragon Boat Festival — Qu Yuan the poet who loved his state and was exiled from it, who walked into the Miluo River, and why rice dumplings were thrown into the water after him.
Qixi — the seventh day of the seventh month — the one night the magpies bridge the river of stars so the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl can meet.
The Mid-Autumn Festival — the full moon, the mooncake, Chang'e in her cold palace, and the rebellion that used mooncakes to hide messages that started a dynasty.
The Hungry Ghost Festival — the seventh month, when the gates of hell are opened and the dead walk among the living, what is done to honor them and what is done to avoid offending them.
The Kitchen God's Departure — the twenty-third day of the twelfth month — the honey placed on his lips, the sticky cake, the ascending smoke, the report delivered to the Jade Emperor, the return on New Year's Eve.
The Double Ninth — Chongyang — the story of Huan Jing and the plague demon, the mountain climb, the chrysanthemum wine, why the elderly are honored on this day.
PART NINETEEN — WHAT THE RECORD CANNOT CONTAIN
There are myths that were never written down.
There are gods whose temples still receive incense but whose stories were never committed to text. There are creatures recorded in county gazetteers that circulated only in one region, were never copied, and are now lost. There are stories that exist only in the memories of people who learned them from people who are gone.
There are traditions of the Miao, the Zhuang, the Yi, the Bai, the Dong, the Tujia, and the fifty-one other recognized peoples of China whose mythologies run parallel to and beneath and through the Han tradition recorded here, and whose stories this record has not adequately captured.
There are stories that were deliberately destroyed and exist now only as titles, only as names referenced in surviving texts that quote from originals no longer available.
There are things that belong in this record and are not in it. The absence is acknowledged here and then set aside. This record proceeds with what remains. What remains is enough to take a long time to read. What remains is more than most people know.
A NOTE BEFORE THE FIRST CHAPTER BEGINS
Each entry listed above has its own chapter in this record.
Begin where you wish. The chapters are arranged in the order the world was arranged — from before the beginning through creation through the age of gods and heroes through the ordering of heaven and hell through the creatures and the festivals and the great stories.
But the world did not require you to enter it in order. Go to the Monkey King. Go to Meng Po. Go to the Kitchen God or the Nine-Tailed Fox or the Peng Bird. Each chapter stands on its own. Each will lead you to the others.
One thing should be known before you begin.
These are not fairy tales. They were not written for children. They were not written for entertainment. They were written because the people who wrote them believed they were true, or believed that truth was carried inside them even if the events had not literally occurred.
They are old. Some of them are three thousand years old. Some are older than the writing that eventually recorded them.
They have survived because someone in every generation decided they were worth keeping.
This record has decided the same thing.
END OF CHAPTER ONE — THE INDEX