In Chinese folk story, there had been a great collision of the sky and the earth that resulted in a huge crack in the sky and a great subside in the earth. Fire and floods destroyed forests and took away mountains. Evil beasts and ghosts walked about. The human race was struggling in great scourge.

When Goddess Nu Wa, who created the first human being, heard the pleading of man, she killed the evil beasts, ghosts and drove away the flood, then she began the work of patching up the sky. She collected firewood and piled it up to the sky. Then, she put blue, white, yellow, red and black stones on top of the firewood. She lighted the firewood with the fire from the earth center and burnt the stone until they melted and flew like colorful syrups alongside the crack. Therefore, the crack in the sky was patched up when the firewood was almost burnt through. The sky was tilted in the northwest; nonetheless the moon and the Sun both go the same direction. The Y sank in the earth was in the southeast, and the waters and streams on earth all run to that direction and converged into a mighty sea. On the bottom of the sea, there was another deep gully, whose waters would never overflow, no matter how much water drained into it. Therefore, there wouldn't be floods.

Inside the gully there were five divine mountains with white birds and beasts and trees yielding fine jades and pearls. Palaces in gold were built on each mountaintop where gods lived happily dressed in gold garments. There was only one small trouble��the mountains all floated on the water. When the winds became stronger, the mountains would flow away and the gods would become homeless. Emperor of the Heaven sent fifteen giant turtles to carry the mountains on their backs. Split in five groups of three, one turtle carried the mountain and the other two were guards. But one year, a giant came fishing. Unaware of the arrangement set forth by the gods, the giant fished six turtles home, and two divine mountains were blown away to the North Pole and sank there. Now you can only see the rest three mountains standing along China's East Sea coast.