Background & setting
Gun is Yu’s father in flood traditions. The Shanhaijing’s Within the Seas chapter preserves a supernatural account of his attempt to control water. Other texts frame the failure more politically or practically, so “blocking versus channeling” is only one way later readers connect father and son.
The story
As floodwater overwhelms the world, Gun takes the supreme ruler’s xirang, a special earth that grows, without waiting for permission. He uses it to contain the water. The theft makes his effort a conflict over divine authority as well as a struggle to save the inhabited world.
The ruler orders Zhurong to kill Gun at Feather Mountain. The text then links Gun’s body to the birth of Yu, who receives the task of laying out the earth. Later interpretations and tellings expand this extraordinary transition in different ways. A failed attempt does not end the story; the next generation inherits the unfinished work.
How to read it
The episode holds rescue, disobedience, punishment and continuity together. Gun is more complex than a mere example of foolish engineering.
Where this telling comes from
Shanhaijing, Within the Seas; compare the human labor of Yu in the Mencius.
- Classic of Mountains and Seas ↗
A layered collection of geography, beings and traditions: Jingwei in the Northern Mountains; Kuafu in Beyond the Seas: North; many accounts of Kunlun and unusual creatures.
- Mencius: Teng Wen Gong I ↗
Yu’s work on the flood and the story of passing his home without entering.
An original introductory retelling · Sources consulted October 10, 2026.