The
Tangram Legend
A
legend says: “Thousands and thousands of years ago, Yu (玉龍),
the Great Dragon, lived among human beings. He was venerated
by them because he was 'yang', good, and was always ready to
help them. One day, the God of Thunder, jealous
of the offerings the men brought to Yu, in a moment of anger,
crushed the sky with his hatchet. Consequently, the sky fell
on the Earth in seven pieces black like coal. The light disappeared
taking with it all existing things.
Yu
at first felt sad for the world, and then felt nostalgic. Therefore,
he picked up the seven black pieces of the sky and in memory
of the former world, began to reassemble different kinds of shapes:
animals, plants and human beings that had disappeared. But every
time he finished a shape, a shadow left it and wandered the deserted
world crying about its misfortune. The complaints arrived until
the ears of the God of Thunder who was touched, and to remedy
the harm he caused, he pulled from every shadow the body of a
living being to repopulate the Earth. From that time on, the
shadow faithfully follows every move we do and with the seven
pieces of the sky, called Qi Qiao Ban (literally 'seven
boards of cunning'), everything on Earth can still be shaped”.
Source: Almanacco
del Matematico, © G. Sarcone, 2001
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