Fusang and the Ten Suns
Mythological Narrative
Above the valley of Tanggu, says the Great Wilderness: East, grows the Fu tree: one sun has just arrived home, another is just setting out, each carried by a crow. Elsewhere in the wilderness the tree towers three hundred li with leaves like mustard greens. The Beyond the Seas: East chapter is more precise: the Fusang stands in the water where the ten suns bathe, nine roosting on the lower branches and one on the upper. The ten are children of Xihe, wife of Di Jun; each day one takes its shift across the sky by crow while nine wait on the branches — a precisely rotating timetable of sunrise.
What happened when the timetable broke is told in the Huainanzi: in the age of Yao all ten suns rose at once, scorching crops and grasses until the people had nothing to eat, and Yao ordered the archer Yi to shoot them down. The final chapter of the Classic itself preserves the commission: Di Jun gave Yi a vermilion bow and plain-corded arrows and sent him to relieve the hardships of the lands below. Nine suns fell; one remains. The crow moved inside the sun itself — the Huainanzi's 'three-legged crow in the sun' made 'golden crow' a lasting name for the sun.
The scene keeps surfacing from the ground: the T-shaped silk banner from Mawangdui tomb 1 paints a red sun with a crow in it and small suns hanging in the Fusang's branches, and the bronze trees of Sanxingdui, with birds perched tier on tier, are routinely compared to the Fusang of this myth.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Fusang and the Ten Suns.
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Jianmu
A god-tree at the world's center on the plain of Duguang: green leaves, purple trunk, black flowers, yellow fruit, a hundred ren tall without side branches. Fuxi climbed it between heaven and earth; at noon it casts no shadow.
Xihe
Wife of Di Jun, dwelling in her own country beyond the southeastern sea, she bore the ten suns and bathes them in the Sweet Gulf; later tradition made her the sun's charioteer.
Di Jun
A high god found only in the Great Wilderness and final chapters: his wife Xihe bore the ten suns, Changxi the twelve moons, and his descendants invented boats, carts, zithers, song and craft.
Hou Yi
When ten suns rose together and scorched the crops, the archer Yi shot down nine and slew the monsters ravaging the land; the elixir he won from the Queen Mother was taken by his wife Chang'e.