About five hundred years ago, during the Ming dynasty, there was no lake where the broad waters now spread.  A flourishing hsien city stood in the centre of a populous country.  The city was noted for its wickedness, but amid the wicked population dwelt one righteous woman, a strict vegetarian and a follower of all good works.  In a vision of the night it was revealed to her that the city and neighbourhood would be destroyed by water, and the sign promised was that when the stone lions in front of the yamen wept tears of blood, then destruction was near at hand.  Like Jonah at Nineveh, the woman, known to-day simply as Niang-tzu, walked up and down the streets of the city, warning all of the coming calamity.  She was laughed at and looked upon as mad by the careless people.  A pork-butcher in the town, a noted wag, took some pig’s blood and sprinkled it round the eyes of the stone lions.  This had the desired effect, for when Niang-tzu saw the blood she fled from the city amid the jeers and laughter of the inhabitants.  Before many hours had passed, however, the face of the sky darkened, a mighty earthquake shook the country-side, there was a great subsidence of the earth’s surface, and the waters of the Yangtzu River flowed into the hollow, burying the city and villages out of sight.  But a spot of ground on which the good woman stood, after escaping from the doomed city, remained at its normal level, and it stands to-day in the midst of the lake, an island called Niang-tzu, a place at which boats anchor at night, or to which they fly for shelter from the storms that sweep the lake.  They are saved to-day because of one good woman helped by the gods so long ago.

As a proof of the truth of the above story, it is asserted that on clear days traces of the buried city may be seen, while occasionally a fisherman casting his net hauls up some household utensil or relic of bygone days.

Miao Creation Legends

If the Miao have no written records, they have many legends in verse, which they learn to repeat and sing.  The Hei Miao (or Black Miao, so called from their dark chocolate-coloured clothes) treasure poetical legends of the Creation and of a deluge.  These are composed in lines of five syllables, in stanzas of unequal length, one interrogative and one responsive.  They are sung or recited by two persons or two groups at feasts and festivals, often by a group of youths and a group of maidens.  The legend of the Creation commences: 

    Who made Heaven and earth? 
    Who made insects? 
    Who made men? 
    Made male and made female? 
      I who speak don’t know.

    Heavenly King made Heaven and earth,
    Ziene made insects,
    Ziene made men and demons,
    Made male and made female. 
      How is it you don’t know?

    How made Heaven and earth? 
    How made insects? 
    How made men and demons? 
    Made male and made female? 
      I who speak don’t know.