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| Chinese Dragon |
People worshiped many different gods in ancient China. Some of these gods have been worshipped since the Shang Dynasty (about 2000 BC). Others became popular later on.
Some of these gods are representations of the weather or natural forces like the sun or the moon or the rain. For instance, the goddess Ba, the daughter of Heaven, is a personification of drought (she's the human form of drought). Yu-huang is a sky god, and Fei Lian and Feng Po Po are wind gods. Lei-Kung and Lei-zi are the gods of thunder and lightning. Heng O is the moon goddess. Gong gong is the god of disastrous floods. Han is the god of the Han river - there were many such minor gods, each responsible for a particular river or mountain. Hou Ji is the god of millet, an important food in northern China.
Sometimes people made abstract ideas into gods, like Cai-shen, the god of prosperity, who you could pray to for success in business, for instance. Fan-kui is the god of butchers, and Sun-pi is the god of cobblers (shoe-makers). Fu-xing is the god of happiness, and Gong De Tian is the goddess of luck. Wei-tuo is the god of teaching.
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