Nüwa

The Creator Mother of Humanity

Domain: Creation & Restoration
Alignment: Neutral Good
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Five-Colored Stones

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5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Chinese

Region

China

Period

c. 1600 BC – present

The Chinese deities bring together traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, and folk religion, worshipped for millennia across China. Presided over by the Jade Emperor, they form a vast celestial bureaucracy mirroring the earthly empire. They are honored in temples, at Chinese New Year, and at the altars of homes and ancestors.

Chinese New Year greets the gods with fireworks, dancing lions, and offerings to the Kitchen God, who ascends to heaven to report on the family's conduct. The Dragon Boat Festival honors the poet Qu Yuan, and at Qingming families sweep the tombs and venerate the ancestors.

At a glance

Nuwa is the supreme mother goddess and creator of humanity, architect of the cosmic order and restorer of the pillars of the firmament in primordial Chinese mythology. Shaping the yellow clay of the Yellow River with her own divine hands and splashing drops with a rope of reeds, she gave life to the human race. When Mount Buzhou collapsed in the war between Gonggong and Zhurong, tilting the earth and tearing the vault of heaven in a cataclysm of flames and floods, she melted stones of five colors to mend the sky, cut off the four legs of the cosmic turtle Ao to hold up the four directions, and slew the Black Dragon to save her mortal children. She is the primordial mother of all human beings, whose cosmic compassion and unwavering courage sustain the dignity and hope of every generation on earth. Her luminous presence continues to bless every home and child with perpetual maternal protection and unconditional love.

15 min read · Reviewed on September 28, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The serpent tail, the compass, the yellow clay and the colored stones

Family

Siblings

Fuxi

Nüwa

Unions

Fuxi

Genealogy according to Shanhaijing, Livro 16; Huainanzi, Lanmingxun; Chu Ci, Tianwen; Fengsu Tongyi

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Qu Yuan, Chu Ci, Tianwen. translation: David Hawkes, 1985.
Liu An, Huainanzi. translation: John S. Major et al., 2010.
Ying Shao, Fengsu Tongyi. translation: Anne Birrell, 1993.
Anônimo, Shanhaijing. translation: Richard E. Strassberg, 2002.

Studies

Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Derk Bodde, Essays on Chinese Civilization. Princeton University Press, 1981.
Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality. George Allen & Unwin, 1979.
E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China. George G. Harrap & Co., 1922.

Name and epithets

The primordial divine name Nuwa (女媧) is made up of the character nu (女), meaning woman, feminine or august mother, and wa (媧), an archaic ideogram of Neolithic origin etymologically linked to earth-related feminine deit…

In the ancient sources

Chu Ci., 4th century BCE.. Classical poem by Qu Yuan that asks how Nuwa shaped the bodies of mortal beings on earth. Shanhaijing., 4th century BCE to 2nd century CE..

The myths

The Creation of Human Beings from Yellow Clay and the Rope of Reeds.. In the early days of the terrestrial world, after the primordial separation of heaven and earth by the giant Pangu, the august goddess Nuwa walked al…

Worship and archaeology

The cult and popular devotion to Nuwa constitute one of the oldest, most venerated and uninterrupted religious and ritual traditions of all Chinese civilization, in which she is honored as the Great Ancestral Mother, sa…

How the god was depicted

In canonical Chinese iconography of the Han dynasty, in the murals of Dunhuang and in the funerary bas-reliefs of the Wu Liang Ci, Nuwa is immortalized with grand royal dignity and symmetrical perfection: she is depicte…

What scholars debate

The Structure of the Creation Myth and the Social Division of Clay.. Historians of social institutions and comparative mythologists debate the famous passage of the Fengsu Tongyi ('Customs and Popular Traditions') by Yi…

After antiquity

In contemporary times, the figure of Nuwa holds an unshakable place of honor in the cultural identity, the literary imagination and the scientific endeavor of modern China.

Did you know?

The geometric instrument gui held by Nuwa in Han art is a compass that symbolizes the round heaven in Chinese cosmology.

Codex relic

Five-Colored Stones. Magic stones with which she mended the torn sky, saving the world from cosmic collapse.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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