Fuxi
Also known as: Paoxi, Baoxi
Mythological Narrative
Fuxi, also written Paoxi, heads the traditional list of the Three Sovereigns. Han-dynasty reliefs pair him with Nüwa, both human-headed and serpent-bodied, their tails entwined; he holds the carpenter's square to her compass, together measuring earth and heaven. The 'Great Commentary' to the Book of Changes credits him with the eight trigrams: ruling the world in high antiquity, he looked up to observe the figures in the sky and down to observe the patterns of the earth, studied the markings of birds and beasts, and devised the trigrams to reach the powers of the spirits and classify the natures of the ten thousand things.
Tradition further makes him the inventor of knotted-cord nets for fishing and hunting, and the founder of marriage rites sealed with paired deerskins. A dragon-horse was said to have risen from the Yellow River bearing the River Chart, from which he drew the trigrams. The Tang scholar Sima Zhen gathered these traditions into his 'Annals of the Three Sovereigns', a supplement to the Records of the Grand Historian, while Huangfu Mi's Diwang Shiji records that his mother conceived him after stepping in a giant's footprint.
Tianshui in Gansu claims his birthplace, the ancient Chengji, and its Ming-dynasty Fuxi Temple still hosts annual state ceremonies; at Huaiyang in Henan he is worshipped merged with Taihao, god of the east, at the Taihao Mausoleum.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## First of the Three Sovereigns
Fuxi is remembered in Chinese tradition as the first of the Three Sovereigns (San Huang), legendary culture-founders credited with establishing the foundations of civilization before the age of the Five Emperors. Where Nüwa is chiefly a creator and repairer of the world, Fuxi's role centers on teaching humanity the skills and institutions of ordered life.
### The Eight Trigrams
Fuxi's most celebrated achievement is the creation of the *bagua*, the Eight Trigrams that underlie the *Yijing* (*I Ching*, the Book of Changes). The "Xici" ("Appended Judgments"), a commentary section of the *Yijing*, describes Baoxi (an alternate name for Fuxi) looking upward to observe the patterns of the heavens and downward to observe the patterns of the earth, studying the markings of birds and beasts, and from these observations devising the eight trigrams to convey the virtues of the spiritual and to classify the qualities of the myriad things.
### Teacher of Civilization
Beyond the trigrams, Fuxi is credited with teaching people to weave fishing nets and hunting snares, to domesticate animals, and, in several traditions, with establishing the institution of marriage, ordering the previously chaotic relations between men and women.
### Paired with Nüwa
Fuxi is consistently linked with the goddess Nüwa, both in art and in narrative. Han-dynasty tomb reliefs across China depict the pair with human upper bodies and intertwined serpent tails, Fuxi typically holding a carpenter's square (symbolizing the earth) and Nüwa a compass (symbolizing the heavens), together representing the ordering of the cosmos. The 2nd-century CE rhapsody "Lu Ling Guang Dian Fu" by Wang Yanshou explicitly describes this paired serpent-bodied imagery. In most early sources the two are presented as brother and sister; a later tradition, attested in Tang-dynasty texts such as Li Rong's *Duyi Zhi* ("Records of Strange and Different Things"), recounts that after a great flood destroyed all other people, Fuxi and Nüwa married to repopulate the earth, a variant that should be understood as a distinct and later layer of the tradition rather than the earliest form of their pairing.
Cross-Pantheon Parallels & Archetypes
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Fuxi.
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