The teacher bears
In ancient times China was incorporated as a mosaic of clans, tribes, peoples variegated. Nomads followed their herds in the endless steppes, sedentary cultivating their plots of land on the shores Yellow River green. Hunger, or greed, pushed sometimes stray loot barns painfully pregnant by peasants and steal their chubby girls. Some took a liking to this lifestyle. They only had to draw the rice in the granaries of others without wade to cultivate or harvest it. There was only blood money to pay sometimes. And there are men that smell is intoxicating. The battles followed another. A raid was often followed by a punitive expedition. But it is not easy to find one that remains for a roof with felt, for the sky village.
In one of these villages that stretched along the Yellow River there lived a young man predestined. His mother had conceived, "said the old, while she was still a virgin, three months before her wedding night with the son of the clan chief. It was a stormy night cloudless. The Lightning fell to the door of the house, she seemed to come from the Big Dipper. The old claimed that the seed of the child was Thunder, spitting by Pillar of Celestial Dragon, the sex of the Jade Emperor, the Lord of Heaven himself. Old wives tales, some say, but this time we thought the old who know.
Moreover, How else to explain that the child had spent twelve months in the womb?
The boy was precocious. After a few days, he said his first words, after a few months, he could put them on. Once he knew he learned to walk sit a horse. At age six, he wielded the sword, spear, shield. At eight, he entered into competition with the warriors of the clan and at twelve he followed them into battle. At fourteen, it was he who guided them.
But the young man had other gifts. It was strange dreams, had visions, conversed with the spirits of Nature. The shaman took him into their brotherhood. During an initiation, they sent to hunt bear in the mountains. The waiter reappeared perched on the back of the animal! The old were not deceived, no, because who else but the Son of Heaven could have achieved this feat! The shaman then gave him the name of man: You Xiong, Master of the Bears.
You Xiong had known throughout his childhood raiding nomads wild, screaming, tears, the drama that shot in the dust of their appalling rides. He could not bring himself to live in this constant terror, particularly since some time where looting became more frequent, more violent and much more unstoppable. The enemy had changed. Many tribes had gathered under the banner of Chi You, a particularly skilled and bloodthirsty warrior.
Since her father had been treacherously murdered by the cruel Chi You, You Xiong became the leader of his clan decimated. He completed the cast of his warriors with bears he pitched in battle and sowed panic among the nomads. Bards composed songs telling prowess of the Lord of Bears and sowed the wind in his glory. Other sedentary people rallied to him. He then took the head of a powerful army.
During a punitive expedition, Xiong You had launched his men in the footsteps of Chi You, the leader of the nomads. They thought they had forced their enemy in a mountain pass without issue. But it was a trap. The pitch of a drowned valley fog. The shaman of the steppes were formidable. They knew how to ally with the Spirits of the Mist. Army of sedentary blind, wandered into an inextricable labyrinth of desert canyons, rocky chaos for days, harassed by the nomads. They had exhausted their food and water. They would perish exhaustion.
Then the Master of the Bears got down to the bottom of a mountainous circus where, according to the science of Feng Shui, the breath of the Earth Dragon was particularly concentrated. He took his drum, there resounded a haunting rhythm and sang a strange song, while performing the steps of a wild dance. He went into a trance to talk with the Spirits of the Mist. But bound by enemy shamans, none of them answered the call.
You Xiong, exhausted, collapsed on the rocky ground and turned his mind towards the Palace of Heavenly Emperor Jade. He humbly begged his aid. The fog lifted for a ray of sun wove a rainbow sky. On the ribbons of light slipped a woman draped in a robe of nine colors, face crowned with a golden glitter. She stopped on a rock, before the Master Bear, and his voice sounded crystal:
- I am the Lady of Nine Heavens. The Jade Emperor has heard your call. I bring her presents. It recognizes you as the Son of Heaven, will make you the master of the Middle Kingdom.
The Immortal resplendent rose into the air and disappeared into the light blinding clouds, leaving behind a float subtle fragrance of lotus flowers and sandalwood. On the rock, Xiong You found a bowl and two books: a handbook of strategy and the first I Ching. In the bowl of water floated a small piece of wood that was inlaid magnetite, a stone-magnet. This was the first compass.
For the Master of the Bears, equipped with celestial present, the war was no longer a game he was able to guide his men through the fog, foil the wiles of his enemy by surprise, the circle. And he killed the cruel hand of his Chi You who had been nicknamed the Master of Wolves.
After the victory, the people of the shores of the Yellow River of You Xiong did their king. The Master of the Bears made sure that the vanquished are pleased to have him as the winner because water does not stay on the mountains, nor revenge on a big heart. He gave them a place in his kingdom.
Many people asked the king magnanimous protection. His authority extended from the foothills of the Himalayas in the China Sea. You Xiong took the title of Son of Heaven and was called Hounag-ti, the Yellow Emperor. His name is associated with the symbolic color of the element Earth, a sign of accomplishment. It was the first master Middle of the Emperor.
Huang-ti surrounded himself with ministers dedicated, honest and wise. He encouraged all agriculture, crafts and medicine as the arts, literature and philosophy. He was an enlightened monarch, a universal spirit. He knew that man as much in need of poetry than he had known Rice since barbarism. They say he wrote his own hand as well as poems laws. He is credited with the invention of the wheel, odes and instrumental compositions. And a treatise of wisdom. It is the yardstick of the powerful. The people made him a god.
