Nezha, the child of lotus

OK, maybe you remember my work “Da Ji - the fox demon” ([link]) in which I drew a woman (or fox demon) named Daji who’s from an ancient Chinese novel (or more likely a legend, probably) called Fengshen Yanyi. I’ve spent time typing a bunch of crap to tell you about Daji’s character.

This character, Li Nezha, very well known in the Chinese community, is also from the novel Fengshen Yanyi, and even from the story of Journey to the West (which you may heard before). He was reincarnated from a jewel from the heavens. His mother had him in her belly for three years and six months (and according to ancient beliefs there are only two possibilities to this phenomenon: either the child was a savior; or a demon). Nezha was born in a meat egg sack instead of as a normal baby. His father thought that he was a demon and cut the egg up with a sword, and then a baby jumped out of it holding a ring in one hand and a long red silk in the other, these are the cosmic ring and the ribbon of chaos (sorry it’s hard to translate the ancient Chinese words into English), which later on become his weapons.

Nezha was a wild child. In the summer of his seventh year, he went out to play and was soaked with sweat. He sat down beside a river and dips the red ribbon into the water to wash himself. The red ribbon was brought with him from the heavens and was a very powerful weapon, when it was dipped into the water it caused an earthquake in the underwater palace of the dragon emperor.

The dragon’s son went out of the river to fight Nezha but is killed by him. The dragon emperor summoned up his soldiers to surround Nezha’s home and threatens Nezha’s father to give him up. Nezha’s father, Li Jing, decided that a monster like this can’t possibly be his son and was about to give him up to the dragon’s army.

Nezha was very disappointed with his father. Instead of letting his father handing him over, he killed himself to make the dragon emperor give up in threatening his parents.

In the book it says that he cut himself open and took all the major organs out of his body to give his flesh and bones back to his parents (which is very disturbing, and remember he was only seven years old), but in less violent versions he just cut his own throat. After he died, his soul flew to his master and asked for help. His master picked up lotus flowers from the pool and recreated his body using lotus roots, and since lotus flowers are heavenly and spiritual flowers of which symbolize purity and immortality, Nezha’s body would always stay the same and be impossible to destroy. Nezha's master also gave him his fiery rings and spear to go with the cosmic ring and red silk.

The whole time during the novel Nezha was in conflict with his father. Li Jing won’t forgive him even after Nezha died, but in the end their conflict was resolved.

And here is Fengshen Yanyi's plot:

FSYY’s story was based upon a real famous tyrant named Emperor Zhou. The story happened in the Shang dynasty, which takes place 1600 B.C- 1066 B.C.

The last generation of emperor in the Shang dynasty, which ruled by Zhou is probably the most famous tyrannical period in the Chinese history. When Zhou was young he was smart, wise, strong, and probably handsome, but when he became older he turned into a brutish man. All this happened because of a woman named Daji.

The real historical Daji was not a demon, but she was ruthless when dealing with the civilians of the time. Daji was an amazingly beautiful woman who was selected as Zhou’s concubine. Some people believe that she was forced to marry the emperor, and she probably didn’t want to. Maybe that’s why she had become so brutish.

Zhou was very lustful; he did everything Daji told him to do- including killing and torturing people and taking away all the wealth and resources.

In the book, Daji was portrayed as a fox demon because at the time FSYY was wrote the concept of fox demon probably fitted her character the most (they believed to be turning into beautiful women and seduce men into doing bad things).

The book starts with Emperor Zhou going into the shrine of Goddess Nuwa, the goddess who was believed to have created the human kind. He looked at the portrait of the goddess and was stunned by her beauty. He was inspired and wrote a poem talking about how he wanted to make the goddess his concubine (what a terrible thing to do!).

When the goddess came into her shrine, she saw the blasphemy writing on the wall and was furious about whoever wrote it. She wanted revenge upon Emperor Zhou. She summoned up three spirits: the thousand year-old fox, the nine-head pheasant, and the jade Pipa demon. She told them to hide their demonic auras, sneak into the emperor’s palace, and distract him. As a reward the goddess promised them that they will become real deities after their mission was done successfully.

Meanwhile, Emperor Zhou was very depressed that none of the women serving him can be a match for Goddess Nuwa. He decided to choose more concubines hoping that one of them is beautiful enough for his lust. This is how Daji came in to play. Daji was the daughter of a lord. She was only a normal girl (despite that she had amazing looks of course) at the time, but the thousand year-old fox demon saw her and thought that she was a great opportunity for it to seduce Emperor Zhou and so it sucked her soul out of her body and took over her human form. Now the fox became Daji and was able to do whatever it wants to the emperor’s throne. This was when all the stories begin.


At first Daji was only a concubine, so the first person she had to kill was the queen- Queen Jiang. In order to do this Daji came up of a horrible plan: hire a murderer pretending to kill Daji (and probably the emperor too) and let himself get caught. And then he would confess that he was hired by Queen Jiang.

The plan worked. The emperor was so furious that he tortured Queen Jiang to death (first digging out one of her eyes, then making her putting her hands on red-hot iron), and officially making Daji the queen. Afterwards Daji was afraid that Queen Jiang’s two sons, one 14 years old and one 12 , will eventually grow up to take revenge, so she convinced the emperor to kill them (although they were Zhou’s sons too). The emperor did not succeed in killing them however. They were saved by a powerful hermit when the execution was about to begin.

Daji did not stop killing and torturing people after that. One person told Zhou to stop spending time with Daji, so Daji made Zhou to tie him onto an iron column fired red; another stood up to Zhou’s tyranny, so Daji dug out his heart. Queen Jiang’s maids wept for their queen, so Daji created big hole on the ground and put the maids inside with millions of poisonous insects and reptiles (centipedes, spiders, scorpions, poisonous snakes and probably toads and lizards) and watched as they were slowly devoured alive. Daji also made people create pools filled with wine and forests with cooked meat hanging on the branches, while normal people were lucky if they have rice to eat.

At the mean time, Goddess Nuwa summoned other two Taoists to go help Daji taking down Emperor Zhou. She promised that she would make the first to take down Zhou a deity. One of them, Jiang Ziya, was wise and decided to join Zhou’s opponent, Emperor Wu; while the other one, Shen Gongbao, decided to take the easy way and join Daji to make Zhou an even crueler leader and hope that his people will eventually rise up and take him down.

All those who opposed Zhou joined Jiang Ziya while all those who remain faithful to him helped him to fight his opponents. Nezha was one of those who join Ziya to fight the emperor. He was probably one of the most powerful warriors on Ziya's side.

In the end of the book they finally took down the emperor off of his throne. Peace finally befell upon the people. The Shang dynasty ended and the Zhou dynasty began.

All who died in the war, no matter which side they were on, were given a title as a deity. There were a few people turned into deities without being killed, and Nezha was one of them.