After getting a ride back from Maijishan, Galen and I went to the temple dedicated to Fuxi. Fuxi is an ancient Chinese god/mythical ancestor who was the first at a lot of things in Chinese mythology. According to Chinese legends, Fuxi and his wife/sister, Nuwa, created all humans after a flood washed everyone else away. Fuxi did a lot a lot of things for the Chinese people. He taught people how to fish with nets, he came up with the whole Yin/Yang thing and the eight trigrams that make up one of the oldest Chinese texts, the Yijing (also spelt I-Ching) and he was the originator of the Chinese writing system. Fuxi was also responsible for giving to humanity the gift of marriage. Before Fuxi, children only knew their mothers and men were thought unnecessary for procreation. Fuxi changed all that.

Fuxi, the creator of the Chinese

In the temple, I talked to a guide who told me that this temple was being used by the government as a gathering point for the Chinese race. Ever since 1988, the mainland Chinese government has sought to bring representatives for all the Chinese people here to the Fuxi Temple on June 22nd, the Dragon Birthday. These representatives included Chinese people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and even the United States. They were all invited to worship the founder of their race.

Talking with the Guide

I asked the tour guide more about who was included in the race that Fuxi founded. At first, he said it was mainly the ethnic Han Chinese who worshipped him as their founder, the Han being the ethnic group we think of as “Chinese.” Then, he used the term “Zhongguoren,” the word that is used in modern Chinese to mean “people who are citizens of China.”

Fuxi, the creator of the Chinese Race

I pursued this more. “Zhongguoren” includes Tibetans and Uighurs, but certainly, Fuxi is just the founder of the Han Chinese. Tibetans do not believe that Fuxi is the founder of their race. Uighurs, a group of Turkic Muslims who live in the far west of China, where we are heading, certainly do not believe that they came out of some hairy dude who created the Chinese writing system.

You really expect a Tibetan or a Uighur to believe this is their progenitor?

For real?

“No, they did” the tour guide insisted. “All the children of the yellow dragon are descended from Fuxi, and this includes all Chinese people. It was not until later that the ethnic groups divided up into Han peoples, Tibetans, Uighurs, etc.”

Fuxi was responsible for the first Yin-Yang, which looked like this. He is considered the founder of Daoism because he is purported to have conceived of the Yin-Yang figure and to have written the Yijing.

The reason this is interesting is because this is the kind of mythological nonsense that the Communist Party intended to sweep away when it came to power in 1949. And it was largely successful at that, though at a great cost. Few in the 1960’s cared about Fuxi or Confucius. They certainly would have never invited Chinese groups from around the world to celebrate the birth of the Chinese race.

Fuxi also invented music

Yet, now, as Communism in China is largely an empty shell, the Communist government has had to rely more and more on Han Chinese nationalism rather than Communism as a justification for its rule. The leaders in Beijing justify their authoritarianism not with Communist ideology but with the idea that they are restoring China to their rightful place in the world. That mission will butt heads with those Chinese citizens who are not Han Chinese, like the Tibetans or the Uighurs.

Incense in the Temple

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