Dialogue between eastern and western myths L I T E R AT U R E S T U DI E S
During her long international career, Professor Mineke Schipper has collected and studied proverbs and stories from all over the world. In China, she discovered a whole range of creation myths. “I want to encourage young people to learn about those rich narratives.” “For a long time, scholars believed that China did not have any creation myths,” says Professor Mineke Schipper, Emeritus Professor of Intercultural Literature Studies at Leiden University. “This book is proof to the contrary,” she says, pointing to a copy of China’s Creation and Origin Myths. Explorations in Oral and Written Traditions on the table in her sunny waterside home close to Amsterdam. The volume – published thanks to funding within the China Exchange Programme – is a richly illustrated and finely bound collection of essays and narratives. It provides a wide-ranging overview, from Pangu, who emerges from an egg, to the goddess Nüwa, who melts stones in order to restore cosmic order. This is the first book in English about this exceptional heritage, the product of China’s more than fifty ethnic cultures. The essays are the result of years of research in villages, during festivals, in temples, and in people’s homes. “There’s an African saying that when an old person dies, a library burns down,” says Professor Schipper. “The same applies to China. People want to pass on their oral traditions because they think it’s important that they do not die out.”
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