Some information about Shennong
Some information about Shennong (found online, ignore if you don't like it)
Shennong is the legendary founder of agriculture and medicine. In ancient times, people lived by gathering and hunting, he invented wooden plows and taught people agricultural production, reflecting the progress from gathering and hunting to farming in China's primitive era. He also tasted hundreds of herbs, discovered medicinal materials, and taught people how to treat diseases.
After Fuxi, Shennongshi is another legendary figure who made many contributions to the Chinese nation. In addition to clarifying agricultural techniques, he also clarified medical skills, established calendar systems, and pioneered water conservancy irrigation technology that connected nine wells. Because of his clarification of agricultural techniques, he was called Shennongshi, and because he was a fire virtue king, he was also called Yandi, Chidi, and Liezishan. He became a rival to Huangdi for the throne. For a long time, there has been no conclusion on whether Shennongshi is actually Yandi.
Legend has it that Shennong was born with a "crystal belly", almost completely transparent, and his internal organs could be seen clearly, as well as the food he ate. At that time, people often got sick or even died from eating the wrong things. Shennong decided to taste all kinds of herbs, putting the edible ones in a bag on his left side and introducing them to others as medicine; the inedible ones were put in a bag on his right side, warning people not to eat them.
Descendants of Shennong
It is said that during the Yan and Huang period, both the Yan Emperor and the Yellow Emperor were descendants of Shennongshi. The two tribes united to form the Huaxia tribe. The Yan Emperor was defeated by the Yellow Emperor, who became the Son of Heaven, and a part of the Yan Emperor's tribe migrated away from the Yellow River basin. Chiyou was also a descendant of Shennongshi. After his tribe was defeated in the Yellow River basin, some merged with the Yellow Emperor's tribe, while others migrated south and later west. The Miao people lived in the areas between the E and Xiang rivers, as well as in Guizhou, were descendants of Chiyou, and were named after their ancestors' farming work. As a descendant of Shennongshi, Chiyou's tribe originally had a relatively high level of civilization, but due to their defeat, their descendants lived in remote mountains for a long time, with no cultural progress, and instead degenerated into barbarians.
Shennong Ancestral Hall
It is said that Shennong was born in Lie Mountain, and someone built "Shennong's Former Residence" in Leshan Town, 18 kilometers north of Suizhou City, Hubei Province. "Shennong's Former Residence" has two places (one for storing grains and medicines, the other for living), as well as Shennong Pavilion, Shennong Pagoda, Shennong Temple, Shannan-built Shennong Tea House, Shennong Flower Garden, Jiulong Pavilion, and Shannan Shennong Mother An's Bathing Pool, Baicao Garden and more than a dozen other places.
In western Hubei's mountainous region, there is a place called "Shennongjia", which is also related to Shennong.
Legend
A pearl on top of the head
Once, Shennong was picking herbs in the deep mountains and old forests. He was surrounded by a group of venomous snakes. The snakes pounced on Shennong together. Some coiled around his waist, some around his legs, and some around his neck, trying to kill him. Shennong was outnumbered and eventually got bitten and fell to the ground. His blood flowed non-stop, and his whole body swelled up. He endured the pain and shouted loudly: "Queen Mother of the West, come quickly to save me!" The Queen Mother heard his cry for help and immediately sent a blue bird carrying one of her life-saving antidote pills to circle around in the sky and search for Shennong. Finally, it found him in a forest. When the snakes saw the Queen Mother's messenger, the blue bird, they were all scared away.
The blue bird fed the elixir to Shennong's mouth. Shennong gradually woke up from his coma. After completing its mission, the blue bird flew back into the clouds and mist. Shennong was grateful and thanked the blue bird loudly. But as soon as he opened his mouth, the elixir fell to the ground. Immediately, a sprout grew out of it, and on top of the grass, a red bead appeared. Shennong took a closer look and found that it was exactly like the elixir. He put it in his mouth and tasted it, and all the remaining pain in his body disappeared. Delighted, he muttered to himself: "I have finally found an antidote for snake bites!" And so, he named this herb "A Pearl on Top of the Head". Later, pharmacologists renamed it "Yanling Grass".
Shennong tasted hundreds of herbs
In ancient times, the five grains and wild grasses grew together. Medicinal herbs and flowers bloomed together. No one could distinguish which grains were edible and which herbs could cure illnesses. The common people relied on hunting to make a living. As they hunted more and more birds in the sky and beasts on the ground, their numbers dwindled. People had no choice but to go hungry. If someone fell ill or was injured, there were no doctors or medicine. Even if they didn't die, they would be left with scars.
The common people suffered from illness. Shennong saw it with his own eyes and felt the pain in his heart. How to feed the hungry people? How to cure their diseases? Shennong thought hard for three days and nights, and finally came up with a solution.
On the fourth day, he led a group of his people. From their hometown of Suizhou, they set out from Lishan and headed northwest towards the great mountains. They walked and walked, their legs swelling and their feet blistering, but still they didn't stop. They walked for 49 days in total. When they arrived at a certain place, all they saw were peaks upon peaks of high mountains and valleys one after another. The mountainside was covered with strange flowers and rare grasses, and the fragrance wafted from far away. Shennong and his people were walking forward when suddenly a group of wolves, tigers, leopards, and snakes emerged from the valley and surrounded them. Shennong immediately ordered his people to swing their divine whips at the beasts. They drove off one batch only for another to rush up. This continued for seven days and seven nights until they finally chased all the beasts away. The tigers, leopards, pythons, and snakes had stripes of scars on their bodies from being whipped by the divine whips, which later turned into patterns on their skin.
At this time, the people said that it was too dangerous here and advised Shennong to go back. Shennong shook his head and said: "Can't go back! The common people are hungry and have nothing to eat, they are sick and have no doctor, how can we go back?" He led the way into the gorge and came to the foot of a vast mountain.
This mountain is half-hidden in the clouds, with cliffs on all sides. Waterfalls hang from the cliffs, covered in green moss, shining and slippery to look at. It seems that without a ladder to climb to heaven, it's impossible to get up there. The people advised him to give up and go back early. Shennong shook his head: "We can't go back! The common people are hungry and have nothing to eat, they're sick and have no medicine, how can we go back?" He stood on a small stone mountain, facing the high mountain, looking up and down, left and right, thinking and planning. Later, people called the small mountain peak where he stood "Wangnong Pavilion". Then, he saw several golden silk monkeys climbing over, following the ancient vines hanging from the cliffs and the rotten wood lying across the waist of the cliff. Shennong had an idea: "Ah ha!" He immediately called his people to come and cut wooden poles, cut vines, lean against the mountain wall to build a scaffold, one layer per day, from spring to summer, from autumn to winter, no matter the wind or rain, snow or ice, never stopping work. After a whole year, they built 360 layers and finally reached the top of the mountain. Legend has it that later people used Shennong's method to build scaffolding for houses.
Shennong led his people, climbed the wooden ladder, and reached the top of the mountain. Ah! The mountain was a world of flowers and grasses, red, green, white, and yellow, all kinds of colors, dense and lush. Shennong liked it very much, he asked his people to guard against wolves and tigers, and personally picked and tasted the flowers and grasses. In order to taste the hundred herbs here, find food for the common people, and find medicine, Shennong ordered his people to plant a few rows of fir trees on the mountain as a city wall to defend against wild beasts, and build thatched houses inside the wall to live in. Later, people called the place where Shennong lived "Wooden City".
During the day, he led his subjects to the mountain to taste all kinds of grasses. At night, he ordered his subjects to start a bonfire and then recorded in detail by the firelight: which grasses were bitter, which were hot, which were cool, which could fill hunger, and which could cure illnesses, all written clearly.
Once, he put a blade of grass in his mouth and tasted it. Suddenly, the sky spun around him, and he fell to the ground with a thud. His subjects rushed to help him sit up, and he realized that he had been poisoned. However, he was unable to speak and could only use his last bit of strength to point at a bright red lingzhi mushroom in front of him and then at his own mouth. His subjects quickly put the lingzhi mushroom in their mouths and chewed it, feeding it to him. After eating the lingzhi mushroom, Shennong's poisoning was cured, his dizziness disappeared, and he regained his ability to speak. From then on, people said that the lingzhi mushroom could bring people back from the dead. His subjects worried that tasting herbs was too dangerous for him and advised him to return to the mountains. He shook his head and said, "We can't go back! The common people are hungry and have nothing to eat; they're sick and have no one to treat them. How can we go back?" After saying this, he continued to taste all sorts of herbs.
He tasted the flowers, grass and trees on one mountain, then went to another mountain to taste them, still using a wooden pole to climb up. He continued for 49 days, traversing all the mountains and ridges here. He discovered that wheat, rice, millet, and sorghum could fill hunger, so he ordered his ministers to bring back seeds and let the people plant them, which later became the five grains. He discovered 365 kinds of medicinal herbs, wrote "Shennong Bencao Jing", and asked his ministers to bring it back to treat illnesses for the people all over the world.
Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, and for the common people, he found filling grains, medicinal herbs to cure diseases. He came to Huishan Village, preparing to go down the mountain and return home. As he looked around, the wooden frames that covered the mountains were gone. It turned out that those wooden poles had fallen to the ground, taken root, sprouted after rain, and over time, they grew into a vast forest. Shennong was in trouble, when suddenly a group of white cranes flew from the sky, taking him and his entourage to heaven. From then on, Huishan Village was filled with fragrance all year round.
To commemorate Shennong's achievement of tasting a hundred herbs and benefiting humanity, the people named this vast forest "Shennongjia". The place where Shennong ascended to heaven, Huishan Village, was renamed "Liuxiang Village".
The Legend of Shennong Reinterpreted
Among the many deeds of Shennong, the most famous and familiar one is the invention of agriculture and cultivation of five grains, which is also the reason why Shennong was called "Shennong", the word "Nong" in "Shennong" fully embodies this great achievement.
Agriculture includes three major steps: planting, harvesting and storage, and processing for food. In the early days of gathering and hunting before the advent of primitive agriculture, harvesting and storage were two completely independent processes. The things people collected and stored were not necessarily edible, and the things they ate were often freshly picked and eaten on the spot, rather than being stored beforehand. Moreover, the food people stored was not always plant seeds. With the appearance of pottery, people had a safe and effective way to store food and water for long periods, thus combining harvesting and storage with eating into one process. Only under these circumstances did people form a large demand for obtaining plant seeds. Primitive planting began in the era of Fu Xi, who used gourds as drinking vessels. The first thing people planted was the calabaza, and in the process of planting calabazas, people accumulated relatively rich planting techniques. By the time of Nu Wa, or the pottery era, planting techniques and the demand for plant seeds were combined, and agriculture emerged. In fact, when people started planting calabazas, it was not necessarily because they needed to plant calabazas, but rather because children liked to play with them. There are three reasons for this: first, children had a lot of free time to take care of, protect, and manage their "labor" achievements; second, the seeds of calabazas were large and white, and people loved them; third, the seeds of calabazas were easy to sow. In many places in China, there is a folk custom of not eating calabaza seeds, and adults will use phrases like "eating calabaza seeds will make your teeth crooked" to scare children, which shows that people valued and protected calabaza seeds, and also implies the long history of calabaza cultivation. When our ancestors shifted from planting calabazas to planting grasses to obtain edible seeds, primitive agriculture was born.
Eating grass to cure diseases is not unique to humans. Many animals have the phenomenon of eating medicine to cure diseases, which shows that long before humans became human, their ancestors had instinctively accumulated a lot of knowledge about medicinal herbs. After the rise of primitive agriculture, people's need to find better crop varieties led them to pay more attention to understanding the characteristics of plants while tasting them, not only paying attention to whether they were toxic or edible, but also paying attention to the bitter, spicy, sour, and sweet flavors of different plant species, parts, and organs, as well as their cold and warm properties. This combined with existing knowledge of medicinal herbs formed medical concepts and began medical exploration. In other words, medical concepts were formed in the process of primitive exploration and domestication of plants as crops, a kind of "unintentional planting willows and becoming shaded" wisdom. This should be the historical truth of Shennong's enlightenment to medicine.
To cultivate crops on a large scale, one must first choose suitable plant species and domesticate them into crop varieties, such as rice, millet, barley, wheat, and legumes; secondly, one needs farm tools, such as plows; thirdly, one needs to grasp the timing of farming. All these require long-term technological progress and knowledge accumulation, which cannot be achieved overnight, even if a person devotes their entire life to it. Therefore, the era of Shennong is quite long.
In the early stages of agricultural exhibitions, major technological advances were mainly reflected in the domestication of wild plants. Through trial and error, ancient people initially identified several main types of wild grasses suitable for cultivation. The types of wild grasses varied by region. Except for a portion of harvested seeds that were consumed as food, people would select plump seeds to be kept as seed stock. This was actually the process of domesticating wild plants and animals, causing cultivated plants and domesticated animals to become increasingly different from their wild ancestors, eventually becoming crops and livestock.
The Chinese placed great importance on seed preservation work, always going to great lengths to protect crop seeds, even having a saying "starve to death rather than eat seed stock". This custom was even more beneficial for the selection breeding of crop varieties. It can be inferred that by the time of Shennong, China had already basically cultivated all major crop varieties, namely the five grains.
