40 Fun Facts About Xia Dynasty

What did the last Xia king reportedly fill a lake with, big enough to float boats?

Wine filled the lake, and legend says three thousand men drank from it at the beat of a drum. Many reportedly fell in drunk and drowned.

What did Yu the Great reportedly refuse to do three times during his thirteen years fighting floods?

Yu passed his door but would not enter his own home, even when he heard his wife was in labour. In one telling, the son he had never met was more than ten years old by the third pass.

Which ruling house, the first to leave written records in China, traditionally overthrew the Xia?

The Shang dynasty followed the Xia in traditional history and is the earliest firmly supported by archaeological evidence. Some histories of China therefore begin with it instead.

Which mythical creatures was the Xia king Kong Jia reportedly given, hiring keepers to raise them?

Dragons, a pair of them, were said to be a divine gift, but one died in its keeper's care. The keeper served it to the king as a meal, then fled when the truth came out.

Yu the Great won fame taming the floods of which waterway, the second-longest in China?

The Yellow River carries so much fine silt that its bed keeps rising, which made its floods a constant threat. That mix of gift and menace earned it the nicknames China's Pride and China's Sorrow.

Which sky event did the Xia king Zhong Kang's astronomers, said to be drunk, fail to predict?

A solar eclipse caught the court off guard and caused panic among the common people. Zhong Kang sent a nobleman to punish the astronomers for neglecting their duties.

Yu the Great set the pattern for Chinese dynasties by letting the Xia throne pass to which relative?

His son Qi took the throne, ending the older custom of handing power to the most capable candidate. Yu had reportedly picked a minister as heir, but the lords backed Qi instead.

Which emperor travelled to honour Yu the Great at his reputed tomb in the last year of his reign?

Qin Shi Huang, the emperor buried with a terracotta army, climbed the mountain and sacrificed to the spirit of Yu. Later emperors kept up the custom of performing ceremonies there.

Which metal did workshops at the site most often linked to the Xia pioneer casting into ritual vessels?

Bronze was cast there in piece-moulds, a technique the city's workshops pioneered. The plain around it has no copper of its own, so the ore had to be brought in from elsewhere.

The Xia are never mentioned on which objects, which carry the oldest known body of Chinese writing?

Oracle bones were ox shoulder blades and turtle shells that diviners heated until they cracked, then inscribed. They date from centuries after the Xia supposedly fell, and none names it.

How did Yu the Great finally tame the floods after his father's dams and dikes had failed?

Digging drainage channels let the water run off to the sea instead of piling up behind walls. Yu is said to have eaten and slept alongside the common workers throughout.

Yu the Great is believed to have grown up on which sacred mountain, where the Shaolin Temple now stands?

Mount Song is the central peak of China's Five Great Mountains. Yu's father held a fief there, so the future flood-tamer is thought to have spent his boyhood on its slopes.

Which stone was carved into the huge sculpture 'King Yu Tamed the Flood' kept at Beijing's Palace Museum?

Jade carving is a prized craft of Yangzhou, and the city counts this piece among its classics. Its workshops trace their tradition back more than five thousand years.

Which idea did the early Zhou kings use to explain both their own conquest and the earlier fall of the Xia?

Mandate of Heaven doctrine held that a ruler who governed badly lost the divine right to rule. By saying the Xia had lost it first, the Zhou gave their own rebellion a precedent.

The limp Yu the Great supposedly got from his labours inspired a ritual dance step in which religion?

Taoism calls it the Pace of Yu, a step in which the dancer drags one foot after the other. Legend says the flood work left Yu lame on one side of his body.

Which pastime kept the Xia king Tai Kang away from his capital long enough for a rival to seize it?

Hunting beyond the Luo River was Tai Kang's passion, and he neglected his rule for it. His five younger brothers are said to have composed laments for the lost kingdom.

Which laboratory method dates the site most often linked to the Xia to about 1750–1530 BC?

Radiocarbon dating at first gave wide ranges that sat neatly with the traditional Xia dates. Sharper measurements later narrowed the span to start centuries after the dynasty's supposed founding.

Why did Yu the Great reportedly execute the chieftain Fangfeng at a grand assembly after the floods?

He arrived late, and later tellings add a bitter twist: Fangfeng had stopped on the way to fight a local flood. Modern versions of the legend stress that he was wrongly put to death.

Yu the Great is said to have ridden carriages on land and boats on rivers, but what across mud?

Sleds carried Yu over the mudflats while he surveyed the land. The same account credits him with opening roads that linked all his provinces.

Which site, discovered in central China in 1959, do most Chinese archaeologists identify with the Xia?

Erlitou was at first taken for a capital of the dynasty that came after the Xia. Many Western scholars still call the Xia link unprovable, since the old accounts offer so little that can be tested.

Which tyrant, the last Xia ruler, is said to have ridden on a minister's back as if on a horse?

King Jie had the exhausted minister dragged out and executed when he could crawl no further, the story goes. Tradition remembers him as the oppressor who brought about the collapse of his own dynasty.

Which sage ruler, counted last of the legendary Five Emperors, handed power to Yu the Great?

Emperor Shun passed over his own heir because Yu's flood work had impressed him so much. Yu is said to have declined at first, then accepted because the other lords and chiefs wanted him.

The father of Yu the Great was named Gun, a word that literally means what kind of creature?

Big fish is the literal meaning, fitting for a man whose life was ruled by water. His dykes collapsed, and he ended his days on Feather Mountain, executed or exiled depending on the account.

What is Yu the Great said to have cast from metal sent as tribute by each of his provinces?

Tripod cauldrons, nine in all, came to symbolise the authority of whichever dynasty held them. They passed from one royal house to the next before vanishing, lost in a river by one account.

Which Han dynasty historian listed seventeen Xia kings in his Records of the Grand Historian?

Sima Qian wrote some two thousand years after the Xia supposedly began. His list of the next dynasty's kings was later borne out by excavated inscriptions, but no such proof has turned up for his Xia kings.

Which chronicle, buried in a king's tomb for nearly six centuries, dates the Xia from 1989 to 1558 BC?

Bamboo Annals takes its name from the slips it was written on, recovered in the 3rd century AD from the grave of a king of Wei. Its Xia dates start about two centuries later than the traditional ones.

Which legendary archer, famed for shooting down nine suns, reportedly seized the Xia capital from Tai Kang?

Hou Yi is better known in myth as the husband of the moon goddess Chang'e. In the chronicles he appears as a tribal leader who was later killed by his own former chief minister.

Which rebel leader overthrew the last Xia ruler, then gave the surviving royal clan a small state to rule?

King Tang is said to have won over many smaller kingdoms before he struck. In a famous speech he claimed he had no wish to cause chaos but had to act against the tyrant's terror.

Xiangliu, the nine-headed monster that Yu the Great reportedly killed, took the form of which animal?

A snake with nine heads, Xiangliu was so gluttonous that every head fed at the same meal. The venomous monster was blamed for bringing floods and destruction.

Near which Zhejiang city, once called Kuaiji, does the mausoleum of Yu the Great stand?

Shaoxing lies north of the Kuaiji Mountains, where Yu is said to have died while touring the eastern edge of his realm. The present mausoleum site dates to the 6th century.

A museum of the Xia capital, holding over 2,000 excavated artefacts, opened in 2019 in which city?

Luoyang administers the district where the ruins lie. The scholar who found them had picked out the surrounding area in advance, from old writings, as a likely heartland of the dynasty.

Some scientists link the summer frosts recorded at the fall of the Xia to which volcano's eruption?

Thera, the Aegean island volcano, erupted at around 1600 BC and may have caused a volcanic winter. Chinese records of the dynasty's collapse describe frost in July, a dim sun and famine.

Which celebrated Chinese writer mocked scholars who argued that Yu the Great was really just an insect?

Lu Xun wrote a short story in which a stuttering scholar insists Yu cannot be real, since insects are unable to divert floods. The jab was aimed at a historian he had feuded with.

Which consort of the last Xia king, said to wear a sword and a man's cap, is blamed for the dynasty's fall?

Mo Xi heads a trio of women whom tradition blames for ruining three dynasties in turn. Some accounts go further and cast her as a plotter who colluded with the enemy's chief minister.

Which Xia heir, born after a usurper killed his father, grew up in hiding and won back the throne?

Shao Kang was sheltered by a tribal chief and survived for years as a fugitive before rallying the lords who hated the usurper. His reign is remembered as one of the dynasty's most prosperous periods.

How did a pregnant Xia queen reportedly escape when a usurper's forces killed her husband, King Xiang?

Crawling through a dog hole at the foot of a wall, she reached her parents' land and gave birth in secret. Most people assumed the royal line had died out, which kept the baby safe.

At which battlefield, in a heavy thunderstorm, did the Xia dynasty end with the defeat of its last king?

Mingtiao was where the last king's army gave way, the story goes. He fled and ended his days in exile, while the victor founded a new dynasty.

Which figure, sometimes identified with a Xia king, is honoured in legend as the inventor of alcohol?

Du Kang became the deified patron of brewers in both China and Japan. Poets later used his name as a word for any good drink.

Which historian led the 1920s Doubting Antiquity School, which questioned the traditional story of the Xia?

Gu Jiegang argued that the later the time, the longer China's legendary past became. On his reading, early history was a tale retold for generations, with new elements added at the front.

In some versions of the flood myth, what magic substance did Yu the Great's father steal from the supreme god?

Self-expanding soil, called xirang, could grow without limit, ideal for raising barriers against rising water. One reading sees in it a memory of early farmers building raised garden beds above the marshes.