Hello, and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Beibei.
We're on to one of the most well-known historical stories in China.
That of the great Yu fighting the floods.
As we mentioned in the last episode, 滚
Yu's father spent nine years trying to stop the floods without success.
But at least he had a son, Yu, to continue his battle.
Despite his atypical birth, Yu grew up into a sturdy young man.
At that time, Emperor Yao had already passed the crown to Shun, who in turn appointed many talented ministers who did their jobs well.
The only big trouble that they couldn't tackle was managing the floods.
The floods came every year and the people suffered.
They washed over one place and then went on to ravage another the next year.
People simply couldn't live in peace.
But Guan was already dead, and no one else nearly as experienced and capable could take his place.
That was Emperor Shun's biggest worry.
One day, when Shun was holding council with his ministers on this matter, an imperial bodyguard reported that a young man outside claimed that he had a way to manage the floods.
It was hard for Shun to believe, but he also didn't want to give up on any hope, so he agreed to hear the young man himself.
Yu introduced himself and explained his relationship to Gouen.
He told the emperor that his mission was to finish what his father had started to find a way to manage the floods.
Shun was touched.
He knew that he had banished Gun, which led to his death.
But he also thought of Gun as a dedicated hero.
He wanted at least to give his son the chance to complete his father's mission.
Yu was going to approach the challenge in a different way from his father.
Before he started on changing the landscape, he did a tour of the nation to find out the topography of various places and study the flow of water.
He wanted to first find out why there were floods in the first place.
What was causing them?
Yu found out that it wasn't enough to just stop the water.
The method of building dams that his father used could only work so far.
What was needed was a channel that could drain the water, collect water from small rivers into big rivers and then direct all the extra water into the ocean.
Only then could the problem be really solved.
And that's what Yu did, basically.
Drain away the water.
Now that he had the theory, it was action time.
When people heard about Yu's project, many came to help.
Yu set up a big-scale water control team and started digging.
Just as planned, these river courses directed water from smaller rivers into the big ones, and then from the big ones into the ocean.
This sounds pretty simple.
In theory.
But it was, of course, years and years of hard work.
For one thing, they had no machinery to help them.
It was human labor all the way.
Some legend said that to split rocks and remove parts of mountains...
Yu turned into a huge bear and carried away rocks like an excavator.
It took Yu 13 years to finally tame the floods.
In all these years, Yu lived in the rain and the wind and never rested for a day.
Every Chinese knows the story about the great Yu having passed his own house three times but never went in.
Because all he could think of was taming the floods.
The story was of course to show how dedicated Yu was to the greater good.
But now that I have a family of my own, I wonder if his wife and kids were very happy about that.
But for the Chinese people, this story has always been used to describe how much one is dedicated to one's work, to one's mission in life.
13 years of living in the wilderness, walking all day in muddy water, without proper food and shelter, had weakened Yu, who was then only skin and bones.
Though he was no longer a sturdy young man, he had earned himself the name the Great Yu, and people thanked him for finally giving them peace.
Now you know a story that every Chinese person knows.
The story of the great Yu taming the floods.
But that's not the only story we have about Yu.
What else did he do?
We'll share more in the next episode.
Hope to see you then.
And bye for now.
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