3 Shooting down the Sun

With all our numerous scientific discoveries and technological developments over the past couple of centuries, people are now starting to pay attention to the side effects of such advances, such as, global warming. It has gradually become a common topic for scientific, governmental and even business conferences, while pressure groups are producing videos to promote the idea of preventing global warming. Latest reports suggest that if the current rate of temperature rise is not halted or at least slowed down, 37% of the species on earth will disappear forever in 40 years' time, in other words, over a million kinds of creatures and plants face the prospect of extinction. This would be the biggest disaster in terms of extinction of species since the disappearance of dinosaurs.

You would think that this would be the first time humans have faced such a situation. However, dinosaurs lived on the earth much earlier than people and Chinese beliefs also suggest otherwise. Thousands of years ago, there were 10 suns in the sky. They were all sons of the Heavenly God. They had to take turns to be on duty in the sky to provide light and heat to the people on earth. Days passed by, and they started to feel bored. One day, they thought, why not go on duty together? And they did just that. The presence of the 10 suns together drained rivers and caused the wilting of plants due to excessive evaporation. People felt like they were trapped in an extremely hot furnace.

The Heavenly God saw this, and decided to send Hou Yi to persuade his 10 sons to stop doing this. However, the 10 suns were having so much fun that they simply ignored him. This greatly enraged him. Hou took the Bow of Heaven, loaded a magical arrow, and shot. The first shot took down one of the suns, and then 8 shots later, 9 suns had been taken down. The leftover sun was shivering with fright, hiding behind layers of thick cloud. Hou was just about to take the tenth shot when people reminded him that if all the suns were gone, the world would be in total darkness. He realised that they were right, so he stopped at once and left. Everything then started to go back to normal.

The sun has always been a symbol of hope. Since ancient times, people of all races have realised that the sun is essential to our lives. The sun provides us with light and heat that are the basic components for the growth of all plants and creatures on earth. Because of its mysterious and magical power, people have always respected the sun greatly, some even to the extent of fearing it. As well as respecting the sun, people are also curious about it, and as a result, there is always a deity representing the sun in most ancient cultures. For example, in China there are these 10 sons of the Heavenly God representing the 10 suns; in Greece, there is Helius who is the God of the Sun; and in Egypt there is Ra.

Together with the previous two stories, we can see that the Chinese believed that the ancient gods made huge efforts to provide us with a better environment to live in. Unfortunately, people have now created problems like global warming, acid rain, all sorts of pollution, deforestation, soil erosion and the extinction of species, just to name a few. Since we have realised that we are destroying the earth, it is still not too late to try to reduce the damage, and try to protect and preserve the environment so that the earth will become a better place to live in. We can count on the Chinese to do their part, by continuing the good deeds of their ancient gods in saving the earth for their offspring.