In the beginning of the world, arising out of the chaos of a great flood, a half-serpent man and woman, named Fuxi and Nuwa, lived on a garden mountain called Kunlun, covered with peach trees that bore fruit that could make man immortal. One day, Fuxi saw a dragon horse (often pictured as a great white stag to later generations) coming out of a river, and noticed eight symbols reflected on its shining sides. He wrote the symbols down in the sand of the shore so that he would not forget them and puzzled over their meaning.
After much meditation, Fuxi finally discovered that they represent the process of change, as one symbol led to another, in a perfect cycle. Using these symbols as his basis, he invented the first symbols that would become the Chinese characters. Receiving this gift of wisdom as his Mandate, Fuxi founded the first empire by bearing many generations of children with his wife, Nuwa, and ruled as immortal emperor and empress for one thousand years over their descendants.
Later, mankind left the great mountain paradise and moved to the four corners of the earth, and those who forgot the blossom-covered kingdom became the barbarians of the world. But the Chinese never forgot their first rulers, and their ancients believed that Fuxi and Nuwa received the souls of dead ancestors to their flowering mountain, where they would grant eternal life to those who merited a taste of the immortality peach.
（This narrative is distilled from several historical and mythological texts, the “Records of History” 史记, “Classic of Mountains and Seas” 山海经, “Creation of the Gods” 封神榜, and the “Opening of Heaven and Earth” 天工开物.)
Facing the East 