In Chinese mythology, Nüwa (Traditional Chinese: 女媧 Simplified Chinese: 女娲 Pinyin: nǚwā) is the mother goddess who created humankind, although other traditions would attribute this feat to either Pangu or Yu Huang.

She and her husband Fu Xi, the first of the San Huang, are often called the "parents of humankind", as in one myth they were said to be ancestors of humankind. With Fu Xi she is often depicted with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a snake or dragon as it was in the form of dragons that she and her husband carved out the rivers of the world and drained the floods.

She is charged with the upkeep and maintenance of the Wall of Heaven , whose collapse would obliterate everything.

The Creation of the Human Race

It is said that Nüwa existed in the beginning of the world. She felt lonely as there were no animals so she began the creation of animals and humans. On the first day she created chickens. On the second day she created dogs. On the third day she created sheep. On the forth day she created pigs. On the fifth day she created cows. On the sixth day she created horses. On the seventh day she began creating men from yellow clay, sculpting each one individually, yet after she had created hundreds of figures in this way she still had more to make but had grown tired of the laborious process. So instead of hand crafting each figure, she dipped a rope in clay and flicked it so blobs of clay landed everywhere; each of these blobs became a person. In this way, the story relates, were nobles and commoners created from the hand crafted figures and the blobs respectively. Another variation on this story relates that some of the figures melted in the rain as Nüwa was waiting for them to dry and in this way sickness and physical abnormalities came into existence.

The Upkeep and Maintainence of Heaven

There was a quarrel between two of the more powerful gods, and they decided to settle it with a fight. When the water god Gong Gong saw that he was losing, he smashed his head against Mount Buzhou (不周山), a pillar holding up the sky. The pillar collapsed and caused the sky to tilt towards the northwest and the earth to shift to the southeast. This caused great floods and suffering to the people. Nüwa cut off the legs of a giant tortoise and used them to supplant the fallen pillar, alleviating the situation and sealing the broken sky using stones of seven different colours, but she was unable to fully correct the tilted sky. This explains the phenomenon that sun, moon, and stars move towards the northwest, and that rivers in China flow southeast into the Pacific Ocean.

Some versions of the story narrate that Nüwa herself went up to heaven and filled the gap with her body (half human half serpent) and thus stopped the flood.

According to this legend some of the minorities in South-Western China hail Nüwa as their Goddess and some festivals such as the 'Water-Splashing Festival' are in part a tribute to her sacrifices.