A Historical Account of Tiny People in Ancient Chinese Records

August 29, 2002

In chapters 480 and 482 in the Song Dynasty's "Taipingguang Records" [Note: around 960-1279 A.C.], there were stories about very tiny people. This means little people once existed on earth. Below is a brief account of the legend of these diminutive people:

In the North West Ocean Xuhai region, there existed a nation known as Heming. The people there were three inches tall, but could walk a thousand li (one li is about 1/3 of a mile) a day. They walked as if they were flying but they were often swallowed by seagulls.

There were gentlemen as well as villains among them. The gentlemen were intelligent and adaptable. In order to protect themselves from the seagulls, they often made wooden sculptures that looked like themselves; sometimes they made hundreds of them and placed them along the waterfront. The seagulls mistook them for real people, swallowed them, and ended up choking themselves to death. The seagulls were fooled many times, and eventually stopped eating the real little Heming people when they saw them.

Heming people mostly dwelled near the sides of mountain streams; they dug holes and constructed cities with fortification ponds. The cities were as close as 30 to 50 steps apart. There were more than tens of thousands of these cities. In the spring and summer, they ate seeds of grass on the road; in the fall and winter, they ate grass roots. They wore nothing in the summer, and wore clothes made with grass in the winter. They knew how to stay healthy.

Li Zhangwu had a wax-preserved body of one of these tiny people. It was a little over three inches long. The head, thighs and chest were all well preserved. Eyebrows and eyes could be clearly discerned. Allegedly, he was from the Jiaojiao kingdom, the "dwarf kingdom" mentioned in ancient Chinese legends.

In the Wei Dynasty [Note: around 386-534 A.D.], in Hejian during a rainstorm, eight or nine children came down to the yard of Wang Zichong's home in the rain. They were only five to six inches tall. The children said that their home was on the southeast side of the sea and a heavy storm had blown them there. In talking to them, they appeared to be quite knowledgeable. What they talked about was the same as was recorded in the ancient record books.

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