In the beginning, the giant Pangu sprang forth from the cosmic egg, which fell into two halves – Yin and Yang, sky and earth, male and female. For every day that he stood between them, pushing up the sky, the heavens and earth grew further apart. Upon his death, the highs and hollows of his body formed the heaving landscape: his left eye became the sun, his right eye the moon; his breath, the winds and mists, his hair, the forests; his blood, the waters, his flesh, the fertile lands, and his bones, the mineral spines within.

Alone in the new world, the deity Nüwa, half-woman and half-snake, began to sculpt all manner of creatures from the yellow clay, shaping the first humans on the seventh and last day of her labors.