How is Chinese mythology and western mythology different?

Everyone has some imagination to what they cannot understand. In the ancient time, when the science and technology was not as developed as nowadays, people would use their imagination to think about questions such as, how the world formed, where are we from, who controls the world. There is a lot of interest to read those stories of myths and tales, and different culture, obviously, do have different myths and tales.

As a Chinese, I have read a lot about Chinese myth since I was very young. The system of Chinese myth has lots of versions, and different versions do have some differences. The first god was formed in the very ancient time, called Pangu. Pangu is the one who creates the world which we are living in. The world is chaotic before, the sky and the ground were mingled with each other, and energy was filled in. Pangu was formed in the chaos, and he was so strong, that he used a big axe to split on the space, and the sky and the ground separate a little. Pangu then held the sky, and stood up, to made enough space between the sky and ground. After Pangu died, his two eyes turn into the sun and the moon, his body turns into the mountain and the ground, his blood turns into the rivers and lakes, and his muscles turn into the farmland, and the world formed. After that, Pangu’s energy turns into two dragons and people (god people), and they created five tribes. One interesting thing is that all the gods that related to Pangu all had dragons’ head and snakes’ body. The two dragons got part of Pangu’s ability, one can control the change of day and night, the other can control the weather of the world. Then here comes lots of different versions, but all the versions have the same theme, it is a long time of war. The five tribes had three empires, and they turned into five empires. The empire of the west has two sons, Huang and Yan. They had a very big fight with an enemy called Chiyou, and they won at last.

After that, we still have a lot of myths, but I am not quite familiar with them as they were too long, and had too many versions. The time of gods ends at an empire called Xiao, and he did exist in the real history, he is the first empire of the Xia dynastic. But the real history is quite different from that of the myths. There are too many versions and too many things I cannot make sure right now, so I need more information to know this.

The reason why I have interests of studying the differences between Chinese and western countries’ myths is because of a novel I read before. The novel is a fantasy story, and the background is mostly based on Norse mythology. I didn’t know a lot about it before, all I know is just some famous words, such as “Ragnarok”, so this novel taught me a lot about it. From this book, I knew that the world of Norse mythology is based on Yggdrasil, and there were four kinds of lives, Giants, Gods, Elves, and Dwarves. The Gods were the offspring of Giants, but they were the enemy of them, and had several fights. The Giants lost, and they escaped to Jothuheim. Elves and Dwarves were half gods, and they worked for gods. The leaders of the god were called Odin and Njord, and Odin was the one who created the world and humans.

I don’t know a lot of details of the Norse mythology, as it is just the background of that novel, but I still get a lot of information from it, and find a lot of difference between Chinese mythology and Norse mythology. One important thing is the different concept of gods. In the Chinese mythology, all the gods were so powerful and perfect. They can do anything they want, and get anything they want. But this is quite different in the Norse mythology. In the Norse mythology, the gods are not perfect, and they seem like humans in some ways. For examples, when Odin wanted to have the great wisdom from the giants, he paid the cost of one of his eyes. And was tormented for nine days in order to get the Gungnir. This shows that gods still have lot of problems, and they were not invincible, they also need to cost something when they want something.

Another famous part of Norse mythology is the Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and gods would die. This is because of the conflicts between gods and giants, and they all knew they would have a fight. Although the gods knew that they were destined to lost, they still accepted this ending calmly, and they believed that the gods left will rebuild the world after the end of the world. This is an important difference from Chinese myths. In Chinese myths, the world never ends, it just has some differences of good or bad. But in the Norse mythology, the world was doomed to end, and was rebuilt later. So gods in Norse mythology is different from that in the Chinese mythology, they would loss, they would be destroyed, they need to pay when they want something, and they are not afraid of lost and death. But in Chinese culture, the god is the god, they never have faults. They are all modest, clever, brave, responsible, they have all the good characters. So Chinese gods are very positive, which people need to learn from them.

I think mythology is a very important part of culture, because it reflects how people from this culture think, how do they perceive the world, how do they treat others, what kinds of people do they respect. I think myths of this culture can answer these questions in some ways. Also, the mythology will have influence to the literature and politics. I won’t stop learning this topic, and I think I will have more discovery if I search for some more information about mythology later.