Yellow Emperor

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The Yellow Emperor or Huang Di (Chinese: 黃帝, Simplified Chinese: 黄帝, pīnyīn: huángdì) is a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero who is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese.

One of the Five Emperors, the Yellow Emperor is said by tradition to have reigned from 2698 BCE to 2599 BCE.

The legend of his retreat to west in the war against the eastern Emperor Chi You at the Battle of Zhuolu (涿鹿) is seen as the establishment of the Han Chinese nationality.

According to legend, the Yellow Emperor invented the earliest form of the Chinese calendar, and its current sexagenary cycles are counted based on his reign.

Among his other accomplishments, the Yellow Emperor has been credited with the invention of the principles of Traditional Chinese medicine. Nèijīng (内經, The Medical Canon of the Yellow Emperor), was supposedly composed in collaboration with his physician Qi Bó (岐伯). However, modern historiographers generally consider it to have been compiled from ancient sources by a scholar living between the Zhou and Han dynasties, more than 2,000 years later. He is also said to have played a part in the creation of the Guqin, together with Fuxi and Shennong.

Huang Di is historically remembered as a dragon because some scholars believe that the Huang Di used a snake as his coat of arms. As he defeated enemies he would incorporate their emblems into his own. Huang Di was immortalized as a dragon that looks like his emblem. That explains why the Chinese dragon has the body of a snake; the scales and tail of a fish, the antlers of a deer, the face of a qilin (a deer-like mythical creature with fire all over its body), two pairs of eagle talons, and the eyes of a tiger-lion.

Also, since the Chinese consider Huang Di as their ancestor, they sometimes refer to themselves as "the descendants of the dragon".

In the legend, his wife Lúo Zǔ (螺祖) taught the Chinese how to weave the silk from silkworms, and his historian Cāng Jié created the first Chinese characters.

Legend says that the Yellow Emperor invented the compass during a battle against a rival who used a sandstorm as camouflage to hide his army. Thanks to the compass, the Yellow Emperor found out where his enemy was and defeated him.

The swirling chair in his chariot was also a compass so that he would always face south, which the Chinese people consider to be good Feng Shui.

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Yellow Emperor in popular culture

Huang Di appears as a God in the strategy game Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom made by the now defunct company Sierra Entertainment. In the game he is a patron of hunting and has the skills needed for leading men into battle.

There have been TV dramas made in Mainland China depicting the life of Huang Di. However, their historical accuracy is questionable. They are semi-fictional because their focus is mainly on Wuxia and drama.

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