Gun- Chinese HeroHero"Count of Chong"

The Theft of the Xirang

When the Great Flood engulfed the world, covering the plains and drowning the settlements of mortals, Emperor Yao sought someone capable of controlling the waters. Gun (鯀), a descendant of the Yellow Emperor and Count of Chong, was appointed to the task. In the accounts preserved in the Shanhai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) and Qu Yuan's Tianwen (Heavenly Questions), Gun determined that the only way to contain the flood was with the xirang (息壤), a miraculous self-expanding soil kept in the possession of the Supreme Deity. Without authorization, Gun stole the xirang from heaven and used it to construct dams and barriers against the rising waters. The xirang expanded ceaselessly, building walls of earth wherever it was placed. Yet Gun's approach was fundamentally flawed: he sought to block the waters rather than channel them. For nine years he labored, but the floods continued to rise, overwhelming each new barrier. The waters could not be contained by force alone.

Execution and Rebirth

Emperor Shun, who had succeeded Yao, judged Gun's failure unforgivable. He ordered Zhurong (祝融), the fire god, to execute Gun at Feather Mountain (Yǔshān, 羽山) on the eastern frontier. According to the Shanhai Jing (Book 18), Gun's body was cast into the wilderness of Feather Mountain, but it refused to decay. For three years the corpse lay incorrupt, preserved by some residual divine power. Then, in the most extraordinary moment of the narrative, Gun's belly was cut open and from within emerged his son Yu (禹). In some versions Zhurong's sword opened the body; in others it split of its own accord. Yu would go on to succeed where his father had failed, taming the Great Flood not by damming but by dredging channels to direct the waters to the sea, earning the throne and founding the Xia dynasty. Gun's failure thus contained the seed of the greatest success in Chinese mythological history: the son born from the father's death would save the world by abandoning the father's method. Some traditions recorded in the Shanhai Jing hold that Gun himself was transformed after death into a yellow dragon, a three-legged turtle, or a bear, depending on the version.