A world made from a giant, and people made from mud
In one Chinese creation story, the universe begins as an egg, and inside it the giant PANGU grows for eighteen thousand years. When he breaks out, he pushes the light, clear part up to become the sky and the heavy, cloudy part down to become the earth, and holds them apart until they set. When he dies, his body becomes the world: his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, his eyes the sun and moon, his blood the rivers. In some versions the fleas on his body became the first people, which is not the most flattering start.
Another story gives the credit to the goddess NUWA, who shapes people from yellow clay. Making them one at a time is slow, so she dips a rope in mud and flicks it, and every drop becomes a person too. Later, when one of the pillars holding up the sky breaks, NUWA melts stones of five colours to patch the hole and props up the heavens on the legs of a giant turtle.
Heaven runs like a government office
The JADE EMPEROR rules HEAVEN the way an emperor ruled China, through ministries, officials, reports and a great deal of paperwork. Every home has its own small official, the Kitchen God, who watches the family all year and goes up to report on them just before New Year. Families traditionally give him sticky sweets first, so that his report comes out sweet — or so that his mouth is too gummed up to say anything bad.
WUKONG, the MONKEY King, is what happens when someone refuses to play along. Born from a stone, he learns magic, helps himself to a size-changing iron staff from the undersea palace of the dragon king LONGWANG, and is given a lowly job in HEAVEN minding horses to keep him quiet. When he realises it is an insult, he eats the magic PEACH that grants eternal life, and fights HEAVEN's army to a standstill until the god ERLANG finally captures him.
Five pillars and a very big hand
Even then nothing can hold him, until the Buddha offers a bet: if WUKONG can leap out of his palm, he can rule HEAVEN. The Monkey King somersaults to what looks like the edge of the universe, finds five great pillars, writes his name on one to prove he got there and, being a monkey, pees on it. Back he comes to claim his prize, only to find his writing on one of the Buddha's fingers. He spends the next five hundred years trapped under a mountain.
All of this comes from Journey to the West, a novel published in 1592 and one of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature. It grew out of a real journey: in the 600s the monk Xuanzang travelled from China to India and back to collect Buddhist scriptures, a trip of about sixteen years. In the novel, WUKONG is set free to guard him along the way, with help from a greedy pig and a river monster.