The Chinese have never turned their backs on the ocean, but they have never really paid attention to it either, and the idea of the ocean as a "foreign realm" has always been rooted deep in their souls. So, how do the Chinese people look at the ocean? In the eyes of the ancient Chinese, the ocean is a place full of darkness and horror, that the word "sea", from water from the obscure. Liu Xi, a Han Chinese, said in his "Interpretation of Names", "The sea is also obscure." The so-called obscure, refers to the first day of the month or the end of the day, the meaning of darkness. Jin's Zhang Hua, "Museum Journal" also said, "The sea says, obscure and nothing to see." At the same time, the Chinese people also link the sea with suffering, danger and barbarism, such as the heavy disaster called the Bitter Sea, the northern Siberia desolate barren land called the North Sea, the vast desert called the Vast Sea, and so on. Ancient China had "the king and the king, then the sea razor", meaning that with a gentleman, good people as a monarch, the sea will not flood into disaster. Ancient Chinese equate the ocean with disaster, the so-called "sea is not wave", that is, the sea does not wave, calm is a symbol of the world's peace. The idiom of "the sea feasts and the river is quiet" is to take the calm ocean and the Yellow River as an ideal condition for survival.

According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas and other documents, Yu Qiang, the god of the North Sea (the earliest Chinese god of the sea), whose image is very fierce and dark, is in charge of life and death, and is actually a god of death. There are also stories about Dayu's sea patrols and strange people and events in foreign countries. The Shanhaijing contains a large number of myths about strange people in foreign countries, for example, it describes "the country of the head," "the country of the long feet," "the country of the big man," "the country of the big man," "the country of the long feet," and "the country of the big man, For example, it describes the living conditions of the "Head-filling Country", the "Long-footed Country", the "Big Man Country", and the "Xuanshu Country", which are full of weirdness and strangeness. These myths reflect the Chinese understanding of the ocean - that it is powerful, treacherous, unpredictable and unknowable. Even myths such as the world-famous "Jingwei Reclaiming the Sea" (the most typical myth of a non-sea goddess: it is said that the daughter of Emperor Yan Di, Nuwa, lost her footing in the East China Sea and was drowned. She died in peace, and in order to fight against the menacing sea that drowned her, her soul was transformed into a Jingwei bird, which carried wood from the western mountains to fill the sea every day), it, apart from showing to a certain extent the indomitable spirit of struggle of the Chinese people and their ambition to conquer the sea, mainly embodies the view of the sea in the mind of the ancient Chinese people - that the sea was a place of eerie death. In the Tang and Song dynasties, along with the development and prosperity of China's maritime industry, new folk maritime myths emerged, the most influential being the story of the sea goddess Tianfei Mazu, the main content of which is that the goddess Mazu often manifests herself to save people engaged in fishing and transportation at sea. This myth is a manifestation of people's fear of the sea and their prayers for safe navigation.

Out of the fear and worship of the sea, the ancient Chinese also worshiped the sea, but often listed in the river after the "three kings of the sacrifice of the river also, are the first river and then the sea" ("Rituals - Learning Records"). In fact, before the Qin Dynasty, the economically and culturally developed Central Plains people seldom have a stake in the sea, so people worship the water god in addition to the river, is the lake, spring, wells and other water bodies closely related to people's lives of the god. Until the Qin Dynasty after the unification of the world, with the expansion of the territory, the increase in people's maritime activities, only began to worship the god of the sea. It was only during the Han Dynasty that the god of the sea was gradually mentioned in the same position as the god of inland water. This river enjoys a unique status and the tendency to despise the sea, completely out of people's utilitarian purposes - for the Chinese people, the sea can give far less favor than the river; at the same time, the ancient people of the sea worship and worship, mainly out of fear of this natural force. It can be said that the fear of the sea is y rooted in the traditional cultural psychology of the Chinese people.

The Chinese people's fear of the sea and the dominant "four seas" said that the combination of "sea", "overseas" and the difference between the end of the world. This understanding is nothing more than the edge of the sea and land as a natural barrier, within the barrier is the touchable land, outside the barrier is indistinct, unpredictable unknown world. Under the domination of this consciousness, the formation of the Chinese nation closed the "ocean region view", the scope of activities of the Chinese nation has had a far-reaching impact on the fear of the ocean so that the Chinese nation more in the continent to gallop, but rarely involved in the sea. For a long time, our nation is accustomed to "face to the yellow earth back to the sky", to the sky and even barren barren land is full of attachment, to be able to do not let an inch of land; and like the blue sky as vast, more fertile than the land of the sea or blind, or see and not know, or not use. The reason why the Chinese civilization is called the continental civilization, obviously has a direct and important relationship with this.