In ancient legend, there was a figure named Shennong, also known as the Flame Emperor, who taught people how to grow the five grains and personally tasted hundreds of herbs to create medicine, thus bringing great benefits to humanity and immense blessings to the common people.
The Flame Emperor had a young daughter named Nuwa, who loved to play in the water and often swam in the Eastern Sea. One day, she ventured too deep, exhausted her strength, and was swept under by a massive wave, drowning.
After the girl died, she transformed into a small bird, perching on a mulberry tree on Mount Fajiu (said to be west of present-day Zhangzi County, Shanxi Province). The bird resembled a crow, with patterned markings on its head, a white beak, and red claws. It constantly cried out, "Jingwei! Jingwei!" — which was actually calling its own name.
Strangely, the Jingwei bird never rests. Each day, it carries twigs and pebbles from the Western Mountains, flies over the Eastern Sea, and drops them into the water. Day after day, year after year, it never stops.
What, in the end, was the Jingwei bird trying to accomplish by doing this?
The Jingwei bird tirelessly carried stones and twigs from the western mountains to drop into the Eastern Sea, driven by a single, fierce resolve: to fill the vast ocean completely, so that no one else would ever drown there as the girl Nuwa once had.
This myth reflects the ancient human struggle against nature, when the sea often swallowed lives and property, and people, with little power to resist, dreamed of filling it. Though the girl Nuwa drowned in the ocean, she transformed into the Jingwei bird, tirelessly carrying stones to fill the sea, embodying an unyielding will to fight back.
Later, people used "Jingwei Fills the Sea" to symbolize an unyielding will that fears no hardship and never stops until the goal is achieved.
Source: *Classic of Mountains and Seas*, Chapter "Northern Mountains"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "精卫填海" came to describe an unyielding will that fears no hardship and never stops until the goal is achieved.