Yunhua

deity sky Chinese single tradition · 3

Yunhua is the Jade Emperor's sister and the mother of Erlang Shen. She is mentioned in the Ming-era semi-mythical novel Journey to the West.

↻ synthesized from 3 sources

When

First attested
1368 CE
Attested period
1368 – 2020
Historical notes
Appears in Ming-era novel Journey to the West.

Relationships

parent of
Erlang Shen, Yang Jian
sibling of
Jade Emperor, Tianhua, Jinhua
served by
Erbasu, Jiuyaoxing

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“In later stories, Erlang is the deification of Yang Jian, son of the goddess Yunhua, and nephew of the legendary Jade Emperor. This portrayal as Yang Jian is most common in popular media.”

#21225 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Huayue Sanniang is often mistakenly conflated as the sister of Erlang Shen and the daughter of Yunhua.”

#29615 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Yunhua is often mistakenly conflated with the Wushan goddess Yaoji, despite the fact that Yaoji has no connection to Yang Jian. None of the relevant ancient texts mention Yang Jian's birth mother's name as Yaoji.”

#29850 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5