<P> Mazu's principal legend concerns her saving one or some members of her family when they were caught offshore during a typhoon, usually when she was 16 . It appears in several forms . In one, the women at home feared Lin Yuan and his son were lost but Mazu fell into a trance while weaving at her loom . Her spiritual power began to save the men from drowning but her mother roused her, causing her to drop her brother into the sea . The father returned and told the other villagers of the miracle; this version of the story is preserved in murals at Fengtin in Fujian . One variant is that her brothers were saved but her father was lost; she then spent three days and nights searching for his body before finding it . Another version is that all the men returned safely . Another is that Mazu was praying to Guanyin; another that she was sleeping and assisting her family through her dream . Still another is that the boats were crewed by her four brothers and that she saved three of them, securing their boats together, with the eldest lost owing to the interference of her parents, who mistook her trance for a seizure and woke her . </P> <P> In earlier records, Mazu died unmarried at 27 or 28 . (Her celibacy was sometimes ascribed to a vow she took after losing her brother at sea .) The date of her passing eventually became the specific date of the Double Ninth Festival in 987, making her 27 by western reckoning and 28 by traditional Chinese dating . She was said to have died in meditation, though in some accounts she did not die but climbed a mountain alone and ascended into Heaven as a goddess in a beam of bright light . In others, she died protesting an unwanted betrothal . Still another places her death at age 16, saying she drowned after exhausting herself in a failed attempt to find her lost father, underlining her filial piety . Her corpse then washed ashore on Nangan Island, which preserves a gravesite said to be hers . </P> <P> In addition to the legends surrounding her earthly life, Mazu figures in a number of Chinese myths . </P> <P> In one, the demons Qianliyan ("Thousand - Mile Eye") and Shunfeng'er ("Wind - Following Ear") both fell in love with her and she conceded that she would marry the one who defeated her in combat . Using her martial arts skills, however, she subdued them both and, after becoming friends, hired them as her guardian generals . </P>

Mother ancestor is the goddess of the sea and the queen of heaven