Yaoji- Chinese GodDeity"Goddess of Wushan"

Beneath Mount Tao

Yaoji was the younger sister of the Jade Emperor, and when she descended to the mortal world and fell in love with the scholar Yang Tianyou, she knew the law she was breaking. Celestial beings were forbidden to marry mortals. She married him anyway. They had children, including Yang Jian, who would become the warrior god Erlang Shen.

When the Jade Emperor discovered the union, he imprisoned his sister beneath Mount Tao. Yang Tianyou, a mortal, could do nothing. But the child they had raised was not mortal. Erlang Shen grew into one of the most formidable gods in heaven's ranks, and when he was strong enough, he took up his blade and cleaved Mount Tao in two. The act, pī shān jiù mǔ, became a byword for filial devotion. And the cycle did not end: Yaoji's granddaughter Sanshengmu would love a mortal, be imprisoned beneath Mount Hua, and wait for her own son Chenxiang to split another mountain.

Morning Clouds, Evening Rain

In a separate tradition, Yaoji is identified with the Goddess of Wushan, the divine figure who haunts the misty peaks above the Yangtze gorges. The Warring States poet Song Yu, in his Gaotang fu, describes the King of Chu encountering a goddess at Wushan who tells him: "At dawn I am the morning clouds; at dusk I am the evening rain." The phrase became one of Chinese literature's most enduring euphemisms for romantic union. Both traditions share a core image: a goddess whose love is inseparable from the landscape she inhabits, her presence felt in the mist that clings to mountains.