Page 94 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book
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A-Z 87
A crane on a rock, looking at the sun:
a high-placed official who sees all things
The ‘Boy of the White Crane’ is a kind of demiurge, an attendant of the gods who
lives in the palace of ‘jade emptiness’ in the cosmic mountains of the Kun-lun: he is an
emissary of the gods and he helps heroes in their good works. His doings are recounted
above all in the Feng-shen yan-yi (‘The Metamorphoses of the Gods’).
Pictures often show the ‘Tower of the Yellow Crane’ (huang he lou). This was a
building in the state of Wu in the days of the Three Kingdoms: in it Liu Bei, the future
Emperor of the small state of Shu-Han, was to have been slain by Zhao Yu – a celebrated
episode in the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’.
Creator of the World
Pan-gu
The theory of creation put forward by Chinese philosophers in general, and by the Neo-
Confucian rationalists of the 11th and 12th centuries in particular, allotted no role in the
process to a deity. The Chinese man-in-the-street, however, has always preferred a more
personal creator in the shape of Pan-gu. The myth of Pan-gu seems to have developed
