Hello, and welcome to Chinese Folk Tales.
This is Beibei.
In our last episode, we talked about the great Yu taming the floods.
Everyone in China knows about how he passed his own house three times and didn't go in.
And not because of any domestic misery, but because he was completely devoted to taming the floods.
It was incredibly hard work and some people speculated that it was the god of water that was making trouble.
The god of water made an appearance earlier in our show.
He was the one named Gong Gong that had a feverish temper.
Supposedly, he had someone named Xiang Liu working for him.
And this guy was quite a sight.
He had nine heads of snakes.
Can't be good.
But at least this strange beast wasn't a carnivore.
Nor was he a vegetarian.
He ate only one thing.
And that was dirt.
Or just earth.
Each of his heads could eat up a whole mountain.
And that was not the worst.
He would then spit out swamps of mud.
Stinky, yucky mud mixed with poisonous spit.
And no living thing could survive near such a swamp.
So does this have anything to do with the floods and all?
Yes indeed, because it so happened that this Xiang Liu ate up the dams, turning Yu's great work into poisonous swamps.
How could the Great Yu allow this?
But what could he do?
Well, he could chop off a couple of those snake heads and chop them off he did, one after another.
It was messy work indeed, with nine holes spraying yucky, stinky blood.
Ugh, quite a nightmare.
Xiang Liu could no longer damage the dams.
But there was another problem.
The yucky blood from the monster's body really stank up the whole place.
This was a major pollution disaster.
In fact, this might be the first record of environmental pollution in human history.
This was filthy work, but should be easier than changing the nation's waterways.
The great Yu buried the bloody mess with dirt, and then the whole area caved in.
He then dug a huge hole and made it into a huge pool.
And then he built something like a temple by the side of the pool to keep the spirit of the monster in check.
Having accomplished all these, Great Yu was at the height of his prestige.
It was at this time that Emperor Shun passed his crown to Great Yu, and not just because of his accomplishments.
During all these years of fighting the floods, The Great Yu had traveled all over the country to design a plan for draining flood water.
So he knew the landscape really well, probably better than anybody else at that time.
I think he got the map of the whole country etched on his brain.
Using the mountains and rivers as boundaries, he divided the country into nine parts.
Well, that was probably the wrong word to use.
He charted the territory into nine provinces.
I will spare you the Chinese names, some of which are still in use today, though they might not cover the same territory.
The reason he drew up the boundaries was to facilitate the governance of the kingdoms.
Now each province had a governor, which were called the Nine Shepherds.
It was a good time in Chinese history.
The nine provinces were united, and there were no more serious flooding.
Rivers flowed the way they should, and people lived in peace.
In a place called Mount Tu, the Great Yu called a great congregation of the heads of all nine provinces.
To show their respect for Great Yu, each presented a certain amount of precious metal, bronze to be exact.
With these, the Great Yu made nine tripods with fancy carvings on each, showing the geographic features and other characteristics of each province.
These bronze tripods became national treasures that came to symbolize the power of a strong nation.
So, all was going well for the Great Yu, but he was getting old.
Who could succeed him?
Will he pass the throne to his own son?
We will see in the next episode.
Hope to see you then, and bye for now.
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Special thanks go out to Sanlian Zhongdu for their help in creating the content for this show.
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