Recycled Tales - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 140

Early China relates how the storylines and themes of Chinese flood stories are strikingly
different from those at the roots of Western culture in presenting prevention of the flood as
a human triumph. They do not tell of divine vengeance and human frailty but demonstrate
how human labor can overcome nature.
Interpretations of Chinese flood stories point to their use as effective sanctions for tra-
ditions, laws or institutions in describing the construction of order from the chaos of a
universal flood. In some versions, those who caused the flood are described as hooligans
challenging the proper order of things. Such stories provided a charter for early imperi-
al institutions, relating how the flood dissolved the distinctions between different classes
of men—with disastrous consequences. Some versions of Chinese flood stories focus on
failed attempts to impound the floodwaters, emphasizing the importance of flood con-
trol, which, in turn, helped justify the authority of rulers who maintained the all-important
levees.
The savior-hero Yu is the central figure of Chinese flood myths dating as far back as
1000 BC . He drained lowland floodwaters so that the fields could be planted and dredged
rivers so that they could be channeled to the sea. This divided the world (China) into natural
provinces. In one version, Yu is described as the minister of works who “stabilized the
water and land,” 9 setting the stage for the arrival of agriculture and the development of
Chinese civilization. His work is credited with allowing people to “descend from the hills
and dwell in the fields,” 10 something that parallels how Chinese society moved from the
eroded uplands on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau down to farm the fertile floodplains.
One version of the story holds that in the time of the flood the world was covered by wild
grasses and forests inhabited by birds and wild animals. Taming the floodwaters allowed
for the domestication of crops and the expansion of human settlement, bringing order to
the land. These accounts of subduing nature's chaos sound like draining swampy lowlands
to transform wild land into farmland. The contrast with Mesopotamian stories of a killer
flood sent by a vengeful god is striking.
Deciphering the origin of many flood stories is complicated because the biblical story
may have hybridized with native legends. Noah's story is one of the most colorful in the
Bible and would have impressed people with a flood tradition of their own. But because