Fengbo

Also Known As: Chinese 風伯, “Earl of Wind” or “Wind Uncle”; also Feng Bo, Fengshi 風師 “Master of Wind”, Count of the Wind; identified with the Ji or Winnowing Basket constellation and with the wind spirit Fei Lian
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Fengbo holds the winds of the world in a goatskin bag and looses them, or stirs them with a fan, as heaven’s weather requires.
Role in Mythos: He is the titled officer of wind in the Chinese heavens, partner of the Rain Master, sweeping the road for the Yellow Emperor in one early text and blowing a storm against him in another.
Relation to Humans: For some two thousand years the Chinese state sacrificed to him by the calendar, because a wind at the wrong week flattens a harvest. Farmers and sailors wanted him moderate rather than generous, and the offerings were made to keep him so.

On a threshing floor in north China a farmer lifts a shallow basket of beaten millet and tosses it. The grain falls back with a dry rattle. The chaff does not; it lifts, drifts and is gone over the wall. Every household in the old empire owned such a basket, and every household knew what the motion did. It made a small wind. When Han astronomers looked south on summer nights and saw four stars in the shape of that basket, they knew whose stars they were.

The god behind them is called Fengbo, and the name is a rank. Feng is wind. Bo is the title of an earl, or the word for a father’s elder brother, so that English has given him to readers as the Earl of Wind, the Count of the Wind and, more fondly, Uncle Wind. The oldest ritual books call him Fengshi, the Master of Wind, and pair him with Yushi, the Master of Rain. They travel together through Chinese writing like two officials who share a carriage.

He was worshipped long before anyone told a story about him. The Rites of Zhou lists the Master of Wind and the Master of Rain among the powers that the court’s chief of ritual must feed, and it names the method: firewood stacked high and set alight, the smoke carrying the offering up. Commentators of the Han dynasty then gave each master an address in the sky. Wind belonged to Ji, the Winnowing Basket, a lunar lodge in what the West calls Sagittarius. Rain belonged to Bi, the Net. Under the Later Han the Wind Earl received his sacrifice on a fixed day of the calendar cycle at an altar on the north-west side of the capital, the direction the hard winter winds come from. The Tang court later raised his rank in the list of state offerings. It is a long career for a god with almost no biography.

Nobody recorded who his parents were, or how he came to hold the post.

What the early books do give are two glimpses of him at work, and they do not agree about whose side he is on. In the Han Feizi, a philosopher’s book of the third century BCE, the Yellow Emperor gathers the spirits on the summit of Mount Tai. He rides an ivory chariot drawn by dragons. The Wind Earl goes ahead and sweeps the way clean, the Rain Master follows and lays the dust with a sprinkling of water, and the whole unearthly procession climbs behind them. Wind here is a servant with a broom.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas tells it differently. The war chief Chi You marches against the Yellow Emperor, and to break the imperial army he asks the Wind Earl and the Rain Master for help. They loose a great storm, wind and water together, over the field. The emperor answers by calling down a daughter of heaven named Ba, whose body is drought itself. Where she stands the rain stops. The storm dies in the dry air, and Chi You is taken and killed. The story has no interest in what became of the Wind Earl afterwards, though a poem by Sima Xiangru, preserved in the Han histories, imagines a sky traveller grand enough to have the Wind Earl put to death and the Rain Master flogged. Being wind’s officer was never safe employment.

Later tradition filled in the empty face in two ways. One was to say that the Wind Earl is Fei Lian, a much stranger creature from the southern poems, part bird and part deer, and that the title is simply the office that beast was given. The other was to draw him as a person. By the Ming dynasty he is an old man, white in the beard, wrapped in a yellow cloak, with a cap of blue and red. In some pictures he works a fan. In others he grips a bulging goatskin sack and points its mouth wherever the wind is wanted. In popular religion an old woman, Feng Po Po, came to share the work and in many places took it over.

His power is exact and limited to his department. He decides where the air moves and how hard, from the breeze that carries off chaff to the gale that strips roofs. With the Rain Master beside him he can turn weather into a weapon, as he did for Chi You. Because he is a star as well as an officer, his mood could be read in advance: when the moon passed through the Winnowing Basket, people expected wind.

His limits are the limits of a subordinate. He holds a title, and titles are given. He served the Yellow Emperor and fought him, apparently without choosing either. His storm failed the moment a stronger heavenly power, drought, was set against it. And he could be managed from below. A stack of burning firewood on the right day, at the right altar, was thought enough to keep him civil, which is more than most farmers can say of the wind.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Fengbo in Chinese mythology?

Fengbo is the Chinese god of wind, whose name means Earl of Wind or Wind Uncle. He is the heavenly officer in charge of the winds and the partner of Yushi, the Rain Master. Early ritual texts call him Fengshi, the Master of Wind.

Are Fengbo and Fei Lian the same god?

Later Chinese tradition identifies Fengbo with Fei Lian, a wind creature that is part bird and part deer. Fengbo is the title of the office, and Fei Lian is one being said to hold it. The early ritual texts that order sacrifices to the Master of Wind do not describe him as a beast.

What does Fengbo look like?

Ming-era images show Fengbo as an old man with a white beard, a yellow cloak and a blue and red cap. He holds a fan or a large goatskin sack that contains the winds. Earlier texts give him no appearance at all.

What did Fengbo do in the war between Chi You and the Yellow Emperor?

In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Chi You asked Fengbo and the Rain Master to raise a great storm against the Yellow Emperor’s army. The emperor called down the drought goddess Ba, who stopped the rain, and Chi You was killed. In the Han Feizi, by contrast, Fengbo serves the Yellow Emperor by sweeping the road ahead of his chariot on Mount Tai.

Which star is linked to Fengbo?

Fengbo is linked to Ji, the Winnowing Basket, a Chinese lunar lodge in the constellation Sagittarius. Han dynasty commentators made the connection because a winnowing basket raises wind when grain is tossed in it. The Rain Master was assigned the lodge called Bi, the Net.