In the ancient days of China, during the time of the Great Flood, the land was a chaotic expanse of rising waters and drowning civilizations. The Yellow River and the Huai River had breached their banks, and for generations, the people lived in fear and displacement. The Emperor Yao, and later Emperor Shun, sought a hero who could tame the wild waters. The first to try was Gun, who failed by attempting to dam the waters with 'Xirang' or self-expanding soil. When Gun was executed for his failure, his son, Yu, was tasked by Emperor Shun to succeed where his father had perished. Yu was a man of extraordinary character, tireless in his devotion to the people. He did not seek to block the waters with dikes but to channel them to the sea through the dredging of riverbeds and the cutting of mountains.
While Yu was traveling through the region of Tushan, now known as Mount Tu in Anhui, he encountered a woman of the Tushan clan. Legends say her arrival was preceded by the appearance of a nine-tailed white fox, an omen of high prosperity and a sign that a marriage to this woman would ensure the longevity of his lineage. Despite the crushing weight of his duties, Yu married the Lady of Tushan. However, their union was defined by sacrifice from its very inception. Only four days after their wedding, Yu was called back to the floodwaters. He would spend the next thirteen years laboring across the landscape, passing the gates of his own home three times without ever entering, even when he heard the cries of his newborn son. His dedication was total, and his body bore the scars of his labor; his skin was blackened by the sun, and his legs were thinned by constant wading through the silt.
To move the massive barriers of earth and rock that blocked the rivers' paths, Yu utilized his divine powers. At the Huai River, near the slopes of Mount Tu, the task was particularly grueling. The mountain granite was too hard for human tools to pierce in time to prevent another catastrophic surge. To expedite the work, Yu would transform himself into a colossal, powerful yellow bear. In this monstrous form, he possessed the strength of a hundred giants, able to tear through the earth and toss aside boulders the size of houses. Because this form was terrifying to behold and purely functional for his divine labors, he kept it secret from his wife, fearing that she would not understand the divine necessity of his transformation.
Yu and the Lady of Tushan had an arrangement for her to bring him his midday meals while he worked on the slopes of the mountain. Since he was often deep within the ravines or high upon the crags where she could not see him, they established a signal. Yu placed a large drum at the foot of the mountain work site. He told her, 'When you hear the beat of the drum, it is the signal that I am resting and hungry. Only then should you bring the food up the path.' This system allowed Yu to shift back into his human form and clothe himself before she arrived, preserving the domestic peace and her sense of security.
One afternoon, as Yu was in his bear form, swinging his massive paws to carve a channel through a particularly stubborn ridge of Mount Tu, a heavy stone he had dislodged rolled down the slope. By a cruel twist of fate, the boulder struck the drum with a resounding 'thump' that mimicked the strike of a mallet. Down in the valley, the Lady of Tushan heard the sound and, dutifully fulfilling her role as a supportive wife, gathered the basket of food and began the long trek up the mountain path. She walked with joy, eager for those few precious moments of conversation with her husband, whom she rarely saw.