The goddess Nüwa walked a beautiful but empty world. The sky had been mended. The earth was fertile. But there were no voices. No laughter. No one to appreciate any of it.

Lonely, Nüwa scooped yellow earth from a riverbank and began to shape small figures with her hands. She worked carefully, giving each one eyes, a mouth, two arms, two legs. She breathed life into them with her own divine breath, and they moved, and they spoke, and they looked up at her with something that might have been gratitude.

She worked until her hands were tired, which took about a day. Then she rested, and the figures she had made became the aristocracy — the noble class, who carry a little of the divine earth in their blood.

Then she grew tired of working slowly. So she dipped a rope in mud and swung it — and the drops that flew off became the common people, who are many and whose lives are brief and difficult.

This is why the powerful and the common are made of the same earth. This is why no one is truly superior. Nüwa made all of us from the same handful of mud, and she was in no mood to play favorites.