Gods Supplemental 002: Yang Jian
A quick dive into the backstory of one of Jiang Ziya’s top Daoist warriors.
Transcript
Welcome to the Chinese Lore Podcast, where I retell classic Chinese stories in English. This is supplemental episode 2 for Investiture of the Gods.
In this episode, I’m going to elaborate a little bit on the character of Yang Jian, the Chan sect Daoist warrior who was a key player in the Zhou’s success against the Shang. Despite the important role he played in the novel, we didn’t really get much of a backstory on him. He just showed up in the narrative one day as the disciple of one of the Chan Sect’s masters. So let’s talk about his origin story, or stories.
First of all, there is no historical basis for anyone named Yang Jian who played a key role in the Zhou’s conquest of the Shang. Instead, Yang Jian was one of multiple incarnations of a god in Daoism and Chinese folk religion. This god was generally known as Erlang (4,2). Erlang means “the second son”, as in the second son in a family. In most stories involving this Erlang god, he is portrayed as a handsome young man with a third eye on his head that provides insights beyond ordinary vision. He also wields a three-pointed saber and is accompanied by his Sky-Barking Hound. And this generally syncs with his portrayal in the novel.
There are multiple tellings of how this Erlang deity came to be. The most common origin story is that he was the deification of Li (3) Erlang, the second son of a hydraulic engineer during the Qin Dynasty, which by the way would not exist for another 800 years or so after the time of the Investiture of the Gods.
This historical Li Erlang and his father were both known for their efforts at taming a river to prevent floods. Flood management has been a huge priority throughout Chinese history, and given the expertise of this particular Li Erlang, it’s no surprise that the god on which he was based is generally associated with water. I guess you can say that Erlang is the patron saint of water management.
But there’s another set of legends associated with the god Erlang, and those are the ones that deal with a character named Yang Jian. This Yang Jian, the stories went, was the nephew of the Jade Emperor of Heaven, but it’s a messy family history. His mother was the Jade Emperor’s sister. It was her responsibility to control the gods’ mortal impulses, like love, ambition, affection, and greed. Once, she was pursuing an evil dragon. During the chase, she suffered a heart injury. A mortal, a scholar with the last name Yang, saved her life by giving her his own heart. That moved her, and she married him and had three children with him, including Yang Jian, the middle child.
This whole canoodling with mortals thing, however, was not cool with her divine relatives. The Jade Emperor sent his divine armies to kill her family. Nothing personal sis. They slew her husband and her eldest child, but Yang Jian and his younger sister survived. Their mother, however, was imprisoned by the Jade Emperor under a mountain for her offense. But when Yang Jian grew up, he split the mountain with his ax and freed his mother.
But that was just the start of his adventures. Yang Jian would become a character in various other legends, which usually involved him displaying supernatural powers in accomplishing heroic feats like quelling a dragon, fighting a serpent, carrying mountains on his shoulders while chasing after the sun, and perhaps most impressively, conducting competent flood management. And those of you who have read Journey to the West know that he also makes a cameo appearance in that novel, but there must have been some huge reconciliation effort sometime in the interim, because in that novel, he shows up on the side of the Jade Emperor, the uncle who, you know, destroyed his family and dropped a mountain on his mother.
Alright, that’s about all I have on the backstory of Yang Jian. I’ll see you next time on the Chinese Lore Podcast. Thanks for listening!
Music in This Episode
- “Sao Meo” by Doug Maxwell / Zac Zinger