Religions of Ancient China by Herbert A. Giles

Philosophical Theory of the Universe. -- The problem of the universe has / never offered the slightest difficulty to Chinese philosophers. Before / the beginning of all things, there was Nothing. In the lapse of ages / Nothing coalesced into Unity, the Great Monad. After more ages, the / Great Monad separated into Duality, the Male and Female Principles in / nature; and then, by a process of biogenesis, the visible universe was / produced.

Popular Cosmogeny. -- An addition, however, to this simple system had to / be made, in deference to, and on a plane with, the intelligence of the / masses. According to this, the Male and Female Principles were each / subdivided into Greater and Lesser, and then from the interaction of / these four agencies a being, named P'an Ku, came into existence. He / seems to have come into life endowed with perfect knowledge, and his / function was to set the economy of the universe in order. He is often / depicted as wielding a huge adze, and engaged in constructing the world. / With his death the details of creation began. His breath became the / wind; his voice, the thunder; his left eye, the sun; his right eye, the / moon; his blood flowed in rivers; his hair grew into trees and plants; / his flesh became the soil; his sweat descended as rain; while the / parasites which infested his body were the origin of the human race.