女娲补天
Nüwa mends the sky
Name: ________________ Date: ________
很久很久以前，天空和大地已经分开了。山上有了树，河里有了鱼，可是世界上还没有人。
女神女娲一个人走来走去，觉得很孤单。有一天，她坐在河边，看见水里自己的样子，忽然有了一个想法。
她从河边抓起一把黄泥，照着自己的样子，做了一个小人。小人一放到地上，就活了，还冲着她又笑又跳。女娲高兴极了，又做了一个，又一个。
可是世界这么大，一个一个地做，要做到什么时候？女娲的手越来越累。于是她想出了一个办法：她拿了一根长绳子，放进泥里，然后一甩。绳子上的泥掉到地上，也都变成了人。
有一种说法是，女娲用手做成的人，后来成了有钱人；用绳子甩出来的人，就成了普通人。
人越来越多，世界热闹了起来。可是有一天，出大事了。
传说，水神共工跟别的神打了起来，结果打输了。他气得用头去撞不周山。这座山是一根撑着天的大柱子，被他这么一撞，一下子就断了。
天空破了一大块，出现了一个大洞。地也裂了。大火烧个不停，大水到处都是，可怕的动物从山里跑出来吃人。
女娲看着自己的孩子们，心疼得不得了。她找来红、黄、蓝、黑、白五种颜色的石头，用大火烧了很久，把石头烧化了，再慢慢地把天上的洞补好。
天补好了，可是没有柱子，还会再掉下来。女娲在大海里找到一只巨大的乌龟，切下了它的四条腿，立在东南西北四个角上，把天撑了起来。她还杀了一条害人的黑龙，又用草烧成的灰挡住了大水。
从此，人们又过上了安静的日子。
不过，从那次以后，天就往西北歪了一点儿，地也往东南低了下去。所以传说里，中国的河水都往东流。你打开地图看看，黄河和长江，是不是真的都流到了东边的大海里？
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 样子 | yàngzi | appearance; look |
| 忽然 | hūrán | suddenly; all of a sudden |
| 想法 | xiángfǎ | idea; thought; opinion |
| 天空 | tiānkōng | sky |
| 根 | gēn | root (math.) |
| 大事 | dàshì | major event; big deal; important matter |
| 传说 | chuánshuō | legend; folklore |
| 撞 | zhuàng | to hit; to collide with; to bump into |
| 断 | duàn | to break; to snap |
| 烧 | shāo | to cook; to roast; to stew (as in 烧鹅, 红烧) |
| 可怕 | kěpà | terrible; frightening; awful |
| 红 | hóng | red |
English (for the teacher)
Long, long ago, the sky and the earth had already come apart. There were trees on the mountains and fish in the rivers, but there were no people in the world yet.
The goddess Nüwa wandered about on her own and felt lonely. One day she sat by a river, saw her own reflection in the water, and suddenly had an idea.
She scooped up a handful of yellow mud from the riverbank and shaped a little person in her own likeness. The moment the little figure touched the ground it came alive, laughing and jumping in front of her. Nüwa was delighted, and made another, and another.
But the world was so big: if she made them one at a time, when would she ever finish? Her hands grew more and more tired. So she came up with a trick: she took a long rope, dipped it in the mud and gave it a hard swing. The drops of mud that landed on the ground all turned into people too.
One version says the people she shaped by hand later became the rich, and the ones flicked off the rope became ordinary folk.
There were more and more people, and the world grew lively. Then one day, disaster struck.
The legend says Gonggong, the god of water, went to war with another god and lost. In his rage he rammed his head into Mount Buzhou. That mountain was a great pillar holding up the sky, and when he hit it, with a huge crash, it broke.
A great piece of the sky fell in, leaving an enormous hole. The earth split open too. Fires burned without stopping, floods were everywhere, and wild beasts ran down from the mountains and ate people.
Nüwa looked at her children and her heart ached for them. She gathered stones of five colours, red, yellow, blue, black and white, burned them in a great fire for a long time until they melted, and then patched the hole in the sky bit by bit.
The sky was mended, but without a pillar it would fall again. Nüwa found a gigantic turtle in the sea, cut off its four legs and stood them at the four corners of the earth to hold the sky up. She also killed a black dragon that was harming people, and used the ashes of burned reeds to hold back the flood.
From then on, people lived in peace again.
Still, ever since then the sky has tilted a little to the north-west, and the earth has sunk toward the south-east. That, the legend says, is why China’s rivers all flow east. Open a map and look: do the Yellow River and the Yangtze really both run east to the sea?