No specific "creation" narratives were associated Shangdi, although he could be interpreted in the role of a creator.
In Wu Chinese, "talking about the Shan Hai Jing" is an idiom meaning gossip or idle chat.
It has been called an early encyclopedia of China. Shan Hai Jing (Mountain and Sea Scroll) describes the myths, witchcraft, and religion of ancient China in great detail and also has a record of the geography, sea and mountains, history, medicine, customs, and ethnicities of ancient times.Most of the myths extant today are derived from these works. Other myths continued to be transmitted through oral traditions such as theater, dance, and song, before being recorded in the form of novels such as Fengshen Yanyi.
The myths and the legends were passed down orally for over a thousand years, before being written down in early books such as Shui Jing Zhu and Shan Hai Jing. Historians have conjectured that much of Chinese mythology originated in the twelfth century B.C.E. Spirit of the well, from Myths and Legends of China, 1922 by E.