Fu Xi or Fuxi was a half-snake deity and protoplast who has appeared with his sister Nüwa in accounts of the creation of humanity and invention of civilization since at least the Zhou dynasty.

Among the stories told about him is one in which, inspired by spider webs and other natural phenomena,[3] he created the River Map and then used it to devise the trigrams that comprise the later I Ching.

Yellow River floods were a constant occurrence throughout ancient, medieval, and early modern Chinese history, sometimes covering entire provinces and even shifting between the north and south sides of the Shandong Peninsula.

The River Map typically plays an important role in Yu the Great's eventual successful control over the flooding waters c. 2200–2100 BCE.

[citation needed] Houtu (后土) is a male, female, or non-gendered divinity depending on the source, although the image of a Sacred Mother Earth deity is now common.

Sacrifice and prayer to Houtu are believed to be efficacious for problems of weather, reproduction and family, wealth, and boating safety on the Yellow River.

[4] According to one account, when Yu the Great was attempting to channel the Yellow River and so avoid its flooding, he began by trying to open it to the west towards the mountains and away from the sea.

[7] He connects it to the mingtang halls of worship, saying that they share a division into 9 fields: these in turn are correlated with the 9 celestial objects—the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu, and Ketu—introduced from and according to Indian astronomy.