5,000 Miles Across China

Ok, this is one long blog, but so is this trip and the amount of information I’ve come across regarding Noah’s ark and the great flood here in China! I travelled through India for several weeks and met with a Swami Gi (guru) who told me the Indian story of the great flood. For the past several weeks I’ve taken trains, planes and driven thousands of miles across China researching if the ancient Chinese history have any reference to a flood or Noah’s ark. For the moment I’m here in Beijing just miles from Tienanmen Square where 20 years ago a few days back thousands of student protestors were slaughtered.

Never did I imagine that China had the most wealth of information pertaining to Noah’s ark and history of a global flood! I want to share with you several notes in my journal from the past few weeks…

When I arrived in Beijing I took a 25-hour train ride to Guizhou to visit the Hmong tribe. The Hmong tribe are the indigenous people of China. My goal was to find out if they had a flood story. For thousands of years the Hmong had no written language so they passed their stories down by poems and songs. I traveled to the largest Hmong village in China, which is perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

As I entered the village I noticed a man was skinning two dogs for dinner. Yummy! There in the village I met with an old man who was willing to share with me the story of the flood. He is one of only about 10 other men who still know the ancient stories of the Hmong. Sitting on the floor of his home we ate chicken feet and rice while the old man smoked his 3-foot long pipe. The story he shared was quite hard to understand and I’m afraid many details were lost due to his age and the fact we had to translate from Hmong to Mandarin to English.

Basically, the story goes like this: Two brothers were fighting with each other and one had committed violence against the other. The one brother was jealous of the other. One of the brothers was the thunder god and decided to destroy the world with a flood. The other brother was told the world would be flooded in three days and he needed to take refuge in a gourd (melon) to survive the flood. To be honest with you, I need to go back and listen to the interview again because it was so confusing with all the translations! But, the above details I am sure are true. He also mentioned that after the flood a butterfly landed on a maple tree and laid 12 eggs, which were used to repopulate the world.

I may be looking too far into it, but it sounded to me that the Hmong people had confused several stories into one. I’ve heard of this happening in other ancient tribes in different parts of the world. Doesn’t the two brothers fighting sound like the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis? The descendants of Noah, from the tower of Babel would have carried these stories with them as they dispersed across Asia and around the world.

By the way, I asked the old Hmong leader, “how do I know a Christian missionary hasn’t at some point told you the story of the flood and you’re just retelling it to me?” He responded, “When I was 7 years old a missionary from the UK came to our tribe and handed me a peace of paper. He continued, “not since then has another Christian entered our village.” He then told me, “my great grandfather told me the story and their grandfathers told them the story.” “We have always had this story,” he explained.

After telling me the story of the flood, the old Hmong man wanted to tell me another story which he explained took place after the flood. There are many details to the story, but basically after the flood the sun had disappeared. The earth grew cold and the plants would not grow. They called upon the rooster to coax the sun to come back. Finally, the rooster succeeded and the sun returned.

Can this possibly be a story of the ice age? Did the ice age take place after the flood (around 4,000 years ago) and not 10,000 years ago like some scientist claim? Palm trees and plant vegetation have been discovered under Antarctica, which point to an event where the world froze quickly. Genesis 8:1 says that God caused a great wind to sweep over the earth at the end of the flood. Could this wind have played a factor in cooling the earth?

Is there anything else in China that might point to an ice age after the flood? It gets better!

From Beijing I rented a car and drove 7 hours to Shanxi province. On the way I stopped at a restaurant and ate some snake for dinner. There in Shanxi province I visited a 1500 year old temple built high up on the side of a cliff. It is one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen. It is called the Nuwa temple. According to Chinese history, Nuwa is an ancient character who saved the world from a global flood. I’m not making this stuff up!

According to the ancient story of Nuwa, the gods were angry and crashed into Bushou (Imperfect) mountain, breaking the heavenly pillar and causing the cables of heaven to snap. The firmament tilted to the northwest and the sun, moon and the stars started to drift in that direction. This caused the rivers to run to the southeast. Nuwa used colored stone to patch the hole in the sky. Nuwa is known today in China as the “sky hole patcher.”

Can you believe there is a story in China of someone called Nuwa? Is this as amazing to you as it is to me?

What is the phrase “sun, moon and the stars started to drift in that direction” trying to tell us? I’ve been trying to figure out what this means. Could it be a reference that the earth actually fell off its axis? What could cause this to happen?

When the 2004 Indian ocean earthquake took place the earth actually wobbled on its axis from this single quake. Genesis 7:11 says that on the day the flood began, there was a “breaking up” of the “fountains of the deep.” Possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor there was a massive release of water. The waters that had been held back burst forth with catastrophic consequences. It is interesting that up to 70 percent or more of what comes out of volcanoes is water, often in the form of steam. Did this violent breaking up event, which was many times more powerful than the Indian ocean earthquake could have caused the world to fall off its axis? I’m not a scientist, I’m just asking questions and searching for answers.

Even a small change in the earth’s axis would have great consequences. If the world fell from its axis to its current 23.5 degrees, world temperatures would drop and “plants would not grow.” This sudden event would cause the earth’s seas to spill onto land.

What would happen if the world did not tilt on its axis? If earth did not tilt on its axis there would be no seasons. Fall, winter, spring, and summer would not exist. While here in Beijing, a scripture in Genesis had dawned on me, which is a post-flood world description: “as long as the earth remains, there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night” – Gen 8:22. There were no seasons before the flood!

Wanting to learn more about Nuwa I met with a man who is considered by the Chinese as the most important historian living today. He is also the most important oracle bone expert. (I can’t share his name until I’m out of China and the film is complete) Oracle bones are animal bones and tortoise shells that have ancient Chinese characters written on them. Unlike our English alphabet which is phonetic, these ancient Chinese characters are pictorgraphic. One word may have several different pictures in it that make up that word.

I was surprised that this oracle bone expert, who is a communist, had shared amazing details with me. According to him, the ancient Chinese had embedded their history and events into the development of their calligraphy. I asked him for an example and he gave me the Chinese word for “the past.” The word, which dates back 4000 years, consists of two pictures: a symbol for the sun and above the sun is a symbol for water. The water had become so high that it had reached the heavens. According to the scientist, when the ancient Chinese referred to “the past” they used the event of the great flood as a reference.

Then I met with another man who expounded on what the scientist had told me. The Chinese word for “big boat” consists of three pictures: ark, eight, mouth (people). Can someone please explain to me why the ancient Chinese (4000 years ago) described a “big boat” as an ark with 8 people? How many people were on Noah’s ark? There was Noah his wife, his three sons and their three wives, which makes it eight people.

He also shared with me the ancient Chinese word for “murder.” It consists of the picture for older brother and then a mark was placed on his forehead for committing a crime. As he shared this with me I had a flashback of the old man in the Hmong tribe telling me the story of the flood. He said there were two brothers and one had committed violence against the other. Due to this violence the earth was flooded. Oh my gosh!

Have you ever had a revelation about something you’ve been searching for? Do you know that feeling when all of a sudden it’s revealed? What an amazing moment! The ancient Chinese knew the story of when Cain (older brother) had killed Abel and it is demonstrated in their ancient flood story and calligraphy! Wow! The flood story and the Cain and Abel story have been confused. In Genesis 4: 8-15 we read how Cain killed Abel and as a punishment God put a curse on Cain and a mark on his forehead.

Trust me when I tell you, but I had not planned for this to happen. A lot of times I just show up and see what I can find. This was one of those times. Stepping out and chasing the dream is beyond what I wished for.