Gun

Also Known As: Chinese 鯀, pinyin Gǔn; also Kun in older romanisation; titled Chong Bo Gun, the Earl of Chong; the character is written with the fish radical
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Gun is the flood fighter who stole the high god’s self-growing soil to dam the waters, and whose dead body lay three years without decay before it gave up his son Yu.
Role in Mythos: He is the failed first tamer of the great flood in the age of Yao, the father of Yu the Great, and the ancestor honoured by the Xia.
Relation to Humans: He spent nine years building dams and dykes to hold the flood off the people and was put to death at Feather Mountain when the waters did not go down. The Xia and the dynasties after them sacrificed to his spirit, and later texts credit him with building the first city walls.

The soil swells. A handful dropped at the edge of brown water takes hold, rises, and keeps rising, pushing up a bank of fresh wet earth where a moment before there was only current. This is xirang, the living soil that grows by itself, and it belongs to the god on high. The man packing it into a dyke with his bare hands did not ask before he took it.

His name is Gun, and he is one of the great failures of Chinese myth. The oldest accounts place him in the reign of the sage king Yao, when a flood covered the land, lapped at the hills and climbed toward the sky. Yao asked his advisers who could deal with it. The lords known as the Four Mountains all gave the same answer. Yao did not like it. He said Gun was a man who disobeyed orders and wrecked his own kin. The lords pressed him to try the man anyway, and Yao, short of better ideas, agreed.

Gun was Earl of Chong, a noble with a fief, and his method was the obvious one. Water is in the wrong place, so wall it in. For nine years he raised dams and embankments, and the picture is easy to hold: lines of workers with baskets of earth on their backs, the slap of mud on mud, Gun on top of the newest bank looking out over a brown plain that used to be fields. Every season the water found a way around or over. After nine years there was nothing to show for it.

One old text adds the theft. In that telling Gun took the god’s swelling soil without waiting for permission and used it to block the flood. The earth grew as promised and the flood kept coming all the same, so that the god now had a stolen treasure, a ruined plan and a drowned world to be angry about. He sent Zhurong, the lord of fire, to kill Gun on the outskirts of Feather Mountain. Other versions keep it among men. In those, it is Yao’s successor Shun who inspects the works, finds them useless, and has Gun banished or executed at the same mountain, one of four great offenders removed at the start of Shun’s rule.

Then comes the part nobody forgets. Gun lay dead on the cold mountain for three years and his body did not rot. When at last it was cut open with a blade from Wu, something came out. The oldest poetry asks in open puzzlement how Gun could carry Yu in his belly, and that is the main line of the story: the son was born from the father’s corpse. Another version says a yellow dragon came out. A third, told in an old chronicle, says Gun’s spirit turned into a yellow bear and walked into the Feather Abyss, the deep pool below the mountain. Some readers take the same written word as a three-legged turtle instead. The texts never settle which animal it was.

The bear came back once. A duke of Jin fell ill, and the sickness would not lift. He dreamed of a yellow bear coming in at his chamber door. A visiting minister from Zheng, a man called Zichan, was asked what it meant, and he said calmly that the bear was Gun, that the Xia had made offerings to him and so had the dynasties after them, and that Jin, now head of the league of states, had let the rite lapse. The offering was made. The duke got better.

Yu, the son, was given his father’s job, and the god or the king, depending on the version, gave him the soil freely this time. Yu did the opposite of everything Gun had done. He cut channels where his father had built walls, and led the water down to the sea. It took him thirteen years, and it worked. One early document turns the contrast into a law of nature: Gun blocked the water, threw the elements out of order and was denied the god’s great plan for governing, while Yu, who let water do what water does, received it.

That judgment stuck, and Gun’s reputation went with it. He was written up as stubborn, a man who would not bend. A poet’s sister warns her brother that Gun was unyielding and died young on the moor of Feather. The same poetry asks, without answering, why he listened to owls and turtles when he planned his works. Commentators who matched the four offenders of Shun’s time with four monsters gave Gun the name Taowu, the unteachable one. He was treated badly by people who had never held back a river.

A fairer account is in the texts too. He stole from heaven for the sake of people who were drowning, and paid for it. His body would not decay until it had produced the one who finished the work. Later writers credit him with building the first city walls, which is a dam put to better use. What he could do was considerable: command labour on a huge scale, raise earth, lay hands on a divine substance and make it grow. What he could not do was change his mind. His strength was the wall, and the flood was the one enemy a wall only makes taller.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Gun in Chinese mythology?

Gun is the father of Yu the Great and the first man appointed to control the great flood in the time of King Yao. He was Earl of Chong and spent nine years building dams and dykes that failed to hold the water. He was put to death at Feather Mountain, and his son Yu later succeeded where he had failed.

What did Gun steal from heaven?

Gun stole xirang, a magic soil that grows by itself, from the high god. He used it to dam the flood without waiting for the god’s permission. The god sent Zhurong, the lord of fire, to kill him for it.

How was Yu the Great born from Gun?

Yu was born from Gun’s dead body. Gun’s corpse lay on Feather Mountain for three years without decaying, and when it was cut open with a blade from Wu, Yu came out. Other versions say a yellow dragon came out, or that Gun’s spirit became a yellow bear and entered the Feather Abyss.

Why did Gun fail to stop the flood?

Gun failed because he tried to block the water with dams and embankments, and the flood kept rising around and over them. His son Yu took the opposite approach and dug channels to lead the water to the sea. Early texts treat Gun’s damming as going against the nature of water.

What animal did Gun turn into?

The sources disagree on the animal Gun became after death. One chronicle says his spirit became a yellow bear, another text says a yellow dragon, and some readers take the written word to mean a three-legged turtle. In the yellow bear version, Gun later appeared in the dream of a sick duke of Jin, who recovered once offerings were made to him.