Fuxi

According to legend, Fuxi was born when his mother, Huaxu, stepped into the footprint of a giant god in a marsh called Leize. He emerged with extraordinary wisdom and, upon maturity, became the ruler of the world during an age when humans lived like animals — eating raw meat, sleeping in the open, without any social order.

Fuxi taught humanity to weave nets for fishing and hunting, to domesticate animals, to cook food with fire, and to perform sacrifices to heaven. He instituted the practice of marriage, requiring couples to exchange gifts and obtain permission, thus bringing order and ethics to human relationships where there had been only instinct.

His crowning achievement was the revelation of the Bagua. As he meditated along the Yellow River, a dragon-horse emerged from the water bearing a pattern of dots — the He Tu (River Map). From this pattern, Fuxi derived the eight trigrams: qian (heaven), kun (earth), zhen (thunder), xun (wind), kan (water), li (fire), gen (mountain), and dui (lake). These symbols encoded the fundamental forces of the cosmos and became the basis of all Chinese metaphysics, medicine, and divination.

Fuxi is worshipped as a sovereign sage, a culture hero who gave humanity the tools to rise above beastliness. His temple in Tianshui, Gansu province — traditionally identified as his birthplace — is a major pilgrimage site where descendants of the Huaxia people honor their ancestor with grand ceremonies.

The Bagua he revealed remains the foundation of the I Ching, one of the most influential books in world philosophy. The trigrams and their combinations form the basis of Taoist cosmology, feng shui, traditional Chinese medicine, and martial arts. To this day, the Bagua appears on the South Korean national flag — a testament to the reach of Fuxi's symbolic system far beyond China itself.

Fuxi and Nuwa are often depicted together in ancient art, their serpent tails intertwined, holding the compass and the square — symbols of the measured, ordered cosmos they brought into being. This image is one of the most iconic in Chinese archaeological art, found in tomb paintings dating back to the Han Dynasty.

Fuxi appears in historical and mythological dramas, usually as a serene, ancient figure who guides early humanity. In xianxia web fiction and games, his Bagua and the He Tu are often invoked as cosmic artifacts of immense power, and Fuxi himself sometimes appears as a primordial god who sets the cosmic order in motion.