Yu the Great — Dà Yů (大禹) — is the great hero, flood-tamer, and founding sage-emperor of Chinese legend: the man who, after thirteen years of selfless labour, mastered the catastrophic Great Flood that had drowned the land — not by damming the waters but by channelling them to the sea — and who founded the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty of China. The conqueror of the flood, Yu the Great is the supreme culture-hero of Chinese civilisation.
The Great Flood
In the time of the sage-emperors Yao and Shun, a catastrophic Great Flood drowned the land of China — vast, devastating floodwaters (sometimes attributed to the broken sky, to Gonggong, or simply to the unruly rivers) that covered the fields, destroyed the crops and homes, and brought misery and death to the people for generations. The taming of this flood was the supreme task of the age. Yu’s father, Gun, was first appointed to control it; Gun tried to dam and block the waters (stealing magic self-expanding soil, the “xirang,” from Heaven to build dikes), but his dams failed, the waters broke through worse than before, and Gun was executed for his failure.
The Thirteen Years of Labour
The task then fell to Gun’s son, Yu. Yu studied his father’s failure and chose the opposite method: instead of damming and blocking the water, he would dredge, channel, and guide it — cutting channels and deepening the river-courses to lead the floodwaters away to the sea, working with the nature of water rather than against it. For thirteen years Yu laboured at this colossal task with utter, selfless devotion — surveying the mountains and rivers of all China, organising armies of labourers, cutting through mountains and opening the river-courses, draining the marshes and guiding the waters to the ocean. His dedication was total and self-sacrificing: the famous detail is that in those thirteen years, Yu passed the door of his own home three times and did not once go in — once hearing his newborn son crying, but not stopping — so wholly was he devoted to the people’s task above his own family. He was aided by dragons, by a magic turtle, and by the gods. At last he mastered the flood: the waters drained to the sea, the land emerged, the rivers ran in their proper courses, and the people could return to their fields and live in peace.
The Founding of the Xia Dynasty
For this supreme achievement — saving all of China from the flood — Yu was honoured above all men. The sage-emperor Shun, recognising Yu’s virtue and merit, abdicated the throne in his favour, and Yu became emperor. He went on to found the Xia dynasty — traditionally the first hereditary dynasty of China — and divided the land into the Nine Provinces, casting the Nine Tripod Cauldrons as symbols of his sovereignty over them. Yu thus stands at the very foundation of Chinese civilisation and history: the hero whose mastery of nature and selfless service to the people made him the model sage-emperor and the founder of the dynastic order. The tamer of the Great Flood, who channelled the waters to the sea through thirteen years of selfless labour and founded the first dynasty — Yu the Great is the supreme culture-hero and founding sage-emperor of Chinese mythology.
