Legend
of the Tangram
A
legend says: "Thousands and thousands of years ago, Yu (玉龍),
the Great Dragon, lived among humans, who venerated him because
he was 'yang', good, and was always ready to help them. One
day, the God of Thunder, jealous of the offerings
the men had brought to Yu, in a burst of anger, crushed the
sky with his hatchet. So, the sky fell on Earth in seven pieces
black like coal. Light disappeared taking with it all existing
things.
At first Yu felt sad for the world, and then felt nostalgic. So he
decided to collect the seven black pieces of the sky and, in memory of the former
world, began to reassemble several kinds of shapes: animals, plants and human
beings that had disappeared. But after finishing each shape, its shadow left
it and wandered the deserted world crying about its misfortune.
These complaints reached the ears of the God of Thunder who was touched
and, to remedy the harm he had caused, he pulled from each shadow the body of
a living being to repopulate the Earth. From that time on, our shadow faithfully
follows every move we make 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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