Nuwa 女娲
Of all the legends about Nuwa, two are the most famous. In one, she fashions people from clay; in the other, she repairs the collapsed sky. In The Legend of Deification, the fate of the Shang dynasty rests with her. Insulted by the king, the goddess summons three demonesses, and one of them soon succeeds in becoming his favourite.
In the legend of the first people, Nuwa (女娲) moulds them from yellow clay. She begins with individual figures, and when she grows tired, she dips a rope into the clay. The drops that fall from it also become people. In the Huainanzi, people already inhabit the earth when the pillars of heaven collapse. Floods, fire and wild beasts threaten them. Then Nuwa melts stones of five colours, patches the breaches in the sky with them, and in place of the old pillars sets the legs of a giant turtle.
In the funeral murals from Astana she was depicted together with Fuxi. Both have human heads, and their snake tails are intertwined. According to one legend, Fuxi and Nuwa were brother and sister who survived the flood and gave rise to a new human race. Their story formed the basis of the series Fu Xi Nv Wa (2000), in which the goddess was played by Rong Rong.
In The Legend of Deification, the King of Shang comes to Nuwa's temple, sees her statue and writes verses on the wall about the goddess's beauty. Nuwa takes this as an insult and sends three demonesses to the court. A fox takes possession of the body of Daji, whom the king soon takes into his favour. In the 1990 television adaptation of the novel, Nuwa was played by Rebecca Chan, and in Gods of Honour (2001) by Joyce Koi.
