Last time, we talked about the last king of the Sha dynasty — King Jie.

He was famous — but for all the wrong reasons: cruelty, partying too much, and ignoring his people.

And honestly? History shows us a clear lesson:

When a ruler cares more about fun than his people, that empire’s days are numbered.

And that’s exactly what happened to the Sha.

Because of King Jie’s brutal rule, the Shang dynasty saw its chance to rise.

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In our last story, we mentioned that Shun—the last of the Five Emperors and the "winner of the toughest interview in history"—didn’t pass his leadership position to his own son. Instead, he gave it to someone named Yu.

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Today, let’s talk about a few heavyweight figures who influenced Chinese myth stories. Even though these stories sound like myths, just like the heroes in Greek mythology, they’re the ancestors recognized in Chinese culture.

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Pangu created the heaven, and Nuwa created humans and mended the sky. But what happened after that? How were some common problems in people’s lives discovered and solved in mythological stories?

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If you know the story of Journey to the West, you should be aware that Sun Wukong was a monkey transformed from a stone. Some say this stone, which gave birth to Sun Wukong, was a leftover piece from the stones Nuwa used to mend the sky in ancient times, and it later became Sun Wukong. If you know another classic Chinese novel—Dream of the Red Chamber—then you must have heard that Jia Baoyu, the protagonist of the book, also has a connection to Nuwa’s stones.

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Hey, have you ever wondered how the world was created according to ancient Chinese stories? We have our own version of a creation myth.

It's kind of like the Book of Genesis or the Greek myth of Chaos, but our creator was a giant named Pangu .

The story goes that in the beginning, everything was inside a big, dark egg. Pangu slept inside it for ages. When he woke up, he broke the egg. The light parts floated up to become the sky, and the heavy parts sank down to become the earth. He stood between them, holding them apart until they were strong and stable. When he finally died, his body transformed into everything we see: his breath became the wind, his eyes became the sun and moon, and his body became the mountains and rivers.

So it's not just a story about how things began; it's really a story about ultimate sacrifice and creation. He became the world itself.

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