United States or Cayman Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Now these magical buckets contained the sources of the five great lakes, which held enough water to inundate the whole of China. Shui-mu Niang-niang with her foot overturned one of the buckets, and the water that had remained in it was enough to cause a formidable flood, which submerged the unfortunate town, and buried it for ever under the immense sheet of water called the Lake of Hung-tsê.

As one may imagine, the furious race she had had to escape from her enemy had given Shui-mu Niang-niang a good appetite. Exhausted with fatigue, and with an empty stomach, she caught sight of a woman selling vermicelli, who had just prepared two bowls of it and was awaiting customers. Shui-mu Niang-niang went up to her and began to eat the strength-giving food with avidity.

The vermicelli-seller was no other than Kuan-yin P'u-sa herself, who had conceived this stratagem as a means of ridding herself of this evil-working goddess. She ordered Sun Hou-tzu to take her down a deep well at the foot of a mountain in Hsü-i Hsien and to fasten her securely there. It is there that Shui-mu Niang-niang remains in her liquid prison.

The Lord of the Skies commanded the Great Kings of the Skies and their generals to raise troops and take the field in order to capture this goddess and deprive her of the power of doing further mischief. But her tricks triumphed over force, and the city continued to be periodically devastated by inundations. One day Shui-mu Niang-niang was seen near the city gate carrying two buckets of water.

One of these is as follows: Shui-mu Niang-niang inundated the town of Ssu-chou almost every year. A report was presented to Yu Huang, Lord of the Skies, begging him to put an end to the scourge which devastated the country and cost so many lives.