Kuafu and Jingwei: chasing the sun, filling the sea

Both myths on this page come from the same book, the Shanhaijing (山海经), the "Classic of Mountains and Seas". It is not a collection of stories but a fabulous geography: mountain after mountain, land after land, it lists rivers, plants, minerals, strange animals and the rites owed to the gods. The myths take a few lines each, slipped in between two descriptions.

The book took shape gradually, from the Warring States to the Han, with no single author; its earliest versions may go back to the 4th century BCE. At the end of the Western Han, Liu Xiang (刘向) and his son Liu Xin (刘歆) edited it into eighteen sections, about 31,000 characters, and attributed it to Yu the Great (大禹) and his assistant Boyi (伯益). It was illustrated, but those pictures are lost.

Its nature has always divided readers. From the Han to the Tang it was taken as reliable geography; the great imperial catalogue of the Qing, on the contrary, called it "the oldest of the xiaoshuo" (小说), that is, tales of strange things. In the 20th century the writer Lu Xun (鲁迅) described it as "an ancient book of shamans", and the myth scholar Yuan Ke (袁珂) saw it as the main storehouse of Chinese myths; most scholars today read it first as a work of geography. The historian Sima Qian (司马迁), in his Records of the Grand Historian (史记), already did not dare speak of its monsters.

The best-known account takes a few sentences, in the chapter "Haiwai bei jing" (海外北经): "Kuafu raced with the sun, until he entered the sun. Thirsty, he wanted to drink: he drank from the Yellow River (河) and the Wei (渭). The Yellow River and the Wei were not enough; he went north to drink from the Great Marsh (大泽). Before he got there, he died of thirst on the way. He threw down his staff, which became the Deng forest (邓林)."

The text says neither who Kuafu (夸父) is nor why he runs. The next entry in the same chapter only describes the land of Kuafu (夸父国), whose people are tall and hold a snake in each hand, with the Deng forest to the east, which, it says, is only "two trees".

Later retellings turn the staff into a peach forest. They place that forest, or Kuafu's mountain, in several spots, for instance at Lingbao in Henan, or in Hunan; the Chinese Wikipedia calls the many sites proposed for the forest later, far-fetched attributions.

The same book tells the story a second time, in the chapter "Dahuang bei jing" (大荒北经), with other details. Here Kuafu has a genealogy: Houtu (后土) begot Xin (信), and Xin begot Kuafu. He lives on a mountain of the Great Wilderness, wears two yellow snakes in his ears and holds two in his hands. Above all, the text passes judgement: "Kuafu did not measure his strength: he wanted to chase the sun and caught up with it at Yugu (禺谷)." The river is not enough for him to drink, and he dies before reaching the Great Marsh.

Then, a few words further on, the same chapter gives him another end: the winged dragon Yinglong (应龙), having killed Chiyou (蚩尤), "also killed Kuafu", then went to live in the south, "which is why it rains a lot in the South". One book, two deaths: the Shanhaijing records both versions without merging them into a single story.

Modern scholars, whose views the Chinese Wikipedia summarises, read Kuafu in several ways. For Wang Xiaolian (王孝廉), he belongs to the world of darkness, and his race is an old myth explaining the cycle of day and night. Others link the myth to nomadic peoples of the north.

The second myth is in the chapter "Bei shan jing" (北山经), in the middle of a list of mountains. On Mount Fajiu (发鸠之山), covered in mulberry trees, lives a bird "that looks like a crow, with a patterned head, a white beak and red feet; it is called Jingwei (精卫), and its cry says its name". The text explains: "She was the youngest daughter of the Yan Emperor (炎帝), named Nüwa (女娃). Nüwa went swimming in the Eastern Sea, drowned and did not come back; that is why she became Jingwei. She keeps carrying in her beak wood and stones from the Western Mountains to fill the Eastern Sea." The entry ends with a river: the Zhang (漳水) rises on this mountain and flows east into the Yellow River.

Mind the name: the girl is called 女娃, Nǚwá, with the character 娃 of 娃娃 (wáwa, "baby, doll"). She has nothing to do with the goddess 女娲, Nǚwā, who mended the sky: in pinyin the two names differ only by their tone.

The French Wikipedia gives another name for the bird, "the bird of resentment" (冤禽). The legend is still told to schoolchildren, in an expanded version: the sea mocks the bird, which will not fill it in a million years; Jingwei answers that it will carry on until the end of the universe. That dialogue is not in the Shanhaijing.

The poet Tao Yuanming (陶渊明, c. 365–427) devoted a cycle of thirteen poems to the book, "On Reading the Shanhaijing" (读山海经). The first shows him at home in early summer, the fields ploughed and sown, reading; he "looks through the pictures of the Shanhaijing", proof that the book was still illustrated in his time.

The ninth poem is for Kuafu, whom it makes a hero: "Kuafu had an immense ambition: he raced with the sun." The two reach the Yuyuan abyss (虞渊) together, "as if there were neither winner nor loser". The poem closes on the Deng forest: "his traces remain in the Deng forest; his work was fulfilled after his death".

The tenth poem pairs Jingwei with Xingtian (刑天), another figure of the Shanhaijing: "Jingwei carries tiny twigs in her beak to fill the vast sea; Xingtian brandishes shield and axe, his fierce will still endures." The end of the poem is darker: once transformed, they have nothing left to regret, but their old ardour is in vain, and the good day they wait for will not come.

Both myths have left four-character idioms, but they are not judged the same way.

夸父逐日, also written 夸父追日, keeps the ambiguity of the ancient texts. According to the English Wikipedia, it is used for someone brave, ready to overcome every obstacle to reach a goal, but over-optimistic, who overestimates his abilities and fails. The Shanhaijing already said that he "did not measure his strength", while Tao Yuanming praised his "immense ambition".

精卫填海 is more clearly praise: the idiom stands for dogged determination in the face of a task that seems impossible, and the legend is told to children to encourage perseverance.

The two figures also live outside books. China's solar space observatory ASO-S, launched on 9 October 2022, was nicknamed Kuafu-1 (夸父一号): a third of the names the public suggested when the Chinese Academy of Sciences asked were "Kuafu". And in 1988 a painting of the Jingwei legend was unveiled on the dome of Tianjin railway station.