China's first rulers were demigods who taught people fire, farming and writing
Before the Xia dynasty, Chinese tradition places a golden age of sage kings: three semi-divine Sovereigns and five virtuous Emperors. They supposedly gave humanity houses, agriculture, medicine and script. Nobody agrees on who belongs on the list, and the idea of five emperors appears only in the 5th century BC.
In myth the Three Sovereigns, sometimes called the Three August Ones, were god-kings who used magic, divine power or harmony with the Tao to improve human life, and helped shape humankind itself. Their virtue granted them long lives and peaceful reigns. The Five Emperors were moral exemplars from an age when contact between the human and divine orders shaped everything. Once worshipped as ancestral spirits, they are now regarded as culture heroes.
The rosters shift with the source, with six or seven variant lists, many written down in much later dynasties. Candidates for the Sovereigns include Fuxi, Nüwa, Shennong, Suiren and Zhu Rong, as well as abstract Heavenly, Earthly and Human Sovereigns. The Emperors are drawn from figures such as the Yellow Emperor, Zhuanxu, Yao and Shun. Some even overlap with Taoist immortals: the Human Sovereign rides a cloud-chariot, and the Yellow Emperor is said to have become a xian at death.
The inventions credited to them read like a checklist of civilisation: controlled fire, house building, farming, medicine, the calendar and Chinese characters. The Yellow Emperor's wife is credited with silk culture. He himself is revered as ancestor of the Huaxia people, and a mausoleum in Shaanxi commemorates that legend. Stories of Nüwa persisting as a spirit into the Shang era show how the figures lingered in belief.
Politics may lurk beneath the legend. In this era rulers supposedly abdicated in favour of worthy successors, until Qi of Xia seized power by force and made the throne hereditary. Scholars think the tradition of peaceful handover arose in the early Warring States period to support ministers who were often toppling their own rulers. After the sage kings, Yu the Great is said to have founded the Xia.
Source: Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
