It was said in ancient times, during the reign of Emperor Yao, a terrible calamity descended upon his realm. Ten suns occupied the sky at the same time, a situation which persisted for many years. Everything on the Earth was scorched and withered by the dazzling heat of the suns. Crops and seeds could not grow in the sweltering daytime; even copper, iron, and stone became so hot they began to melt. It is impossible to appreciate the hardship imposed on the land by having ten suns in the sky. People could not even draw breath and even the slightest movement made one feel as if one’s blood was boiling. Drought descended on the land as no crops could grow and death stalked the sorely pressed land.
The torrid climate called forth all sorts of monsters from flaming forests and boiling lakes. These fearsome creatures committed every kind of atrocity on the people of the land who were already living in desperate circumstances. What miserable times this must have been to live in!
Emperor Yao, the Son of the Heavens, was a king who lived in a very unostentatious way. He lived in a simple and crude hut and ate unprocessed rice and wild herbs. Faced with this terrible catastrophe, the anguished emperor felt as if he was being boiled in oil such was his compassion for his subjects. There seemed nothing that the Emperor could do, so he fell to his knees and prayed earnestly to the sun god to aid him in this time of crisis.
Originally, the ten suns were the children of Di Jun, the God of the Eastern Heavens, who had two wives, one of whom was called Chang Xi, the Goddess of the Moon who bore him twelve moon daughters; while the other was the Goddess of the Sun, Xi He, who gave birth to ten sun sons. The ten sons formerly inhabited Tang Gu beyond the Eastern Seas, where the seawater was very hot since the ten suns frequently bathed there. Nevertheless in the midst of such boiling seas grew a big tree named Fu Song, thousands of zhangs (one zhang equals to 3.3 meters) high and over one thousand arm spans round, which served as the abode of the ten suns. Of them, nine lived on the lower branches and one in the upper reaches, each taking a turn to hang in the sky; one coming out only when the other came in. The departure and return of each sun was always accompanied by their mother Xi He driving the sun chariot. Xi He organized the duty sequence very carefully so there would always be only one sun in the sky every day.
The system functioned well at first, but after thousands of years passed, the restless suns felt very weary of this routine, so one night, they convened a secret meeting on the braches of Fu Song….
The next morning, as the tide ebbed, all ten suns marched out into the sky without their mama noticing. Gamboling and jumping joyfully, they spread themselves out over the vast sky, totally forgetting about their mama and the tedious duties of the sun-chariot. Their mother Xi He was very distressed, crying out and shouting at her naughty sons. To her disappointment, her mischievous children turned a deaf ear to her pleas no matter how she shouted. The ten suns had never been outside playing together before and it was an intoxicating delight for them. They made a collective vow to never part again: to occupy the skies together every day.
Thirsty, hot and hungry, the people were becoming increasingly desperate in the face of this terrible catastrophe. A witch named Nu Chou was invited to kneel on the mountain slope near the imperial capital to pray for rain. This witch was well renowned for her magic powers and hopes were high she could achieve something, but to every one’s surprise and disappointment, she was immediately seized with violent convulsions on being exposed to the sunshine and abruptly fell down face up and never moved again. She had been burned to death by the ten hellish suns. People then fell into complete despair. The situation seemed absolutely hopeless.
Emperor Yao’s prayers were heard by Di Jun. His first idea was to sternly rebuke his sons, but he felt the mischievous boys had got so out of hand that mere words would not be enough. As a father Di Jun was reluctant to apply the laws of the divine realm to punish them, but as a Heavenly God, he realized the situation could not be allowed to continue. The pain and suffering of the people moved him deeply so eventually he resolved to take decisive action against his errant offspring. The god’s most valuable assistant, Hou Yi, was dispatched by Di Jun down to the world to help Emperor Yao to alleviate the terrible suffering in the land .
