Princes Cancong and Yufu, Opened up the land in the dim past.

— Li Bai. “The way to Shu is hard”. Trans. Qianzhi Wu.

In ancient times P’ao-Hsi came to rule the world. Looking up, he contemplated the phenomena in the sky, and looking down, the patterns on the earth. He observed the markings on birds and animals and their adaptations to the earth. From nearby, he took some hint from his own body, and elsewhere from other things. Then he began to make the eight trigrams of the Changes, to pass on to others the regular patterns in the world. Later, when Shen Nung made knots in rope to direct and regularize activities, all kinds of trades and professions were multiplied, and then artificial and refined things sprouted and grew. Ts’ang Chieh, scribe for the Yellow Emperor, on looking at the tracks of the feet of birds and animals, realizing that the patterns and forms were distinguishable, started to create graphs, so that all kinds of professions could be regulated, and all people could be kept under scrutiny.

— Xu Shen. “Postface of the shuo-wen chieh-tzu: the first comprehensive Chinese dictionary”. Trans. K. L. Thern.