Aoki: 三月 2013

Hou Yi Shot Down Nine Suns

According to Chinese Mythologies, in the eastern sea, there was a huge, magic tree named Fu Sang who was over ten thousand feet tall and spread its leaves out over two thousand li (Li is equal to half of kilometer). On it lived the ten three-legged crows(In East Asian mythologies the three-legged crow is thought to represent the sun.). Everyday one of them flew up to the sky, illuminating the earth.

But one day the ten brothers were involved into a heated argument about who was the best sun. To show their individual power, they all flew up to the sky and thus cause the earth to scorch. Plants all died and there was great famine.

When Hou Yi, the leader of a tribe and a superb archer saw all the dead creatures, he was filled with anger. He decided to shoot nine of them down,leaving just one in the sky. He went through all difficulties and finally he reached at the top of the highest mountain next to the easter sea.

Grabbing one arrow out of his quiver and aimed carefully. zing! The arrow flew straight into the heart of one of the sun. Quickly, that sun dropped down from the sky, burning up in a ball of fire. The earth immediately felt cooler. Then the Grand Archer stalked the remaining suns until there was only sun left.

From then on, the last sun flew across the sky in solitude every day, bringing light and warmth to the Earth for all eternity.

Story Board

There are quite many existing sculptures reflecting Hou Yi's great courage and power. But I want to narrow down my focus on the act that the sun was shot by the arrow, just to show ancient Chinese people's will of conquering the nature.

A Sculpture of Hou Yi by Du Yongwei

My idea about how to make the sun comes from some sphere sculptures that uses many irregular circular rings. I was inspired to suggest the sun in this way.