Yellow Emperor

Yellow Emperor

Chinese people proudly call themselves as "descendants of Yan emperor and Yellow emperor ". We often say China has a history of 5 thousand years, it counted from the time of Yellow emperor.
The stories about him were quite legendary, it's hard to say which parts are real history and which are myth. We can understand this way: Yellow emperor was a great tribal leader, so people credit many inventions and creations to him and his ministers, and also made up many legends.

Yellow emperor, surnamed Gongsun, named Xuanyuan, is regarded as the forefather of the China nation. He was the son of a tribal leader Shaodian, it's said he was very smart and could speak soon after his birth. As he grew, he was upright, industrious and knowledgeable. At his 20, Yellow emperor inherited the throne and led his tribe into prosperity.
Back then, different tribes fought all the time. Yellow emperor beat many tribes, and many came over and pledged allegiance. 

Chiyou

Chiyou is another tribal leader, the ancestor of Miao nationality. It's said he had ox head and all of his 81 brothers had iron head and beast body, they ate stone and sand as food, you can imagine how fierce they were. Mostly Chiyou is considered as evil and brutal, however, he was good at fighting and manufacturing weapons, therefore he is also worshiped as god of war. 
Although the details differ, many ancient books recorded the tough fight between Yellow emperor and Chiyou. It's said Chiyou made dense fog to disorient Yellow emperor's military, but Yellow emperor used south pointing cart to find the way. Another saying is they asked gods for help. Anyway, at last Yellow emperor beat Chiyou and united all the tribes. 

Back to the first sentence, you may ask, what about Yan emperor? His name is there. Well, it's a little complicated. There were many records about Yan emperor too. But it's controversial whether Yan emperor is a specific person or a title of a tribal leader, whether he was the one in the legend who tasted many kinds of herbs. So let's just say, it's quite likely he was a tribal leader surnamed Jiang and had big contribution in agriculture and medicine. He was relative to Yellow emperor and two tribes generally became one.