Time, space, and the calendar in early Chinese mythology

Abstract

Chinese mythology was grounded in the temporal and spatial rhythms of the agricultural year. In time, these actions were solidified in the form of a calendar. Early Chinese festivals grew directly out of those calendrical rhythms, and produced China’s first mythical themes. Myth is a living story, told and retold in a continual process. The eventual recording of those myths removed them from those festivals and created an altered kind of story. The Chinese mythological tradition itself focuses far more directly upon stories of culture heroes building a shared society and polity than the origins of the universe. The eventual “origin” tale in China emerged more than a millennium after the first myths, and was far removed from the stories generated by rural farmers in their agricultural festivals.