Yu the Great

Yu the Great 大禹
Song-era depiction of Yu
King of the Xia dynasty
Predecessor	Shun
Successor	Qi
Died	Mount Kuaiji
Spouse	Lady Tushan
Issue	Qi of Xia
Father	Gun
Mother	Nüzhi
Chinese name
Chinese	大禹
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dà Yǔ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Dah Yeu Wade–Giles Ta4 Yü3 IPA [tâ ỳ] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Daaih Yúh Jyutping Daai6 Jyu5 IPA [taːi˨ jyː˩˧] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Tāi-í/Tāi-ú Old Chinese Baxter–Sagart (2014) *lˤat-s ɢʷraʔ

Yu the Great (Chinese: 大禹; pinyin: Dà Yǔ) or Yu the Engineer was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for "the first successful state efforts at flood control,"^[1] his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character.^[2][3] He figures prominently in the Chinese legend titled "Great Yu Controls the Waters" (大禹治水; Dà Yǔ zhì shuǐ). Yu and other "sage-kings" of ancient China were lauded for their virtues and morals by Confucius and other Chinese teachers.^[4] He is one of the few Chinese monarchs who is posthumously honored with the epithet "the Great".

There is no contemporary evidence of Yu's existence as traditionally attested in the Records of the Grand Historian. Yu is said to have ruled as sage-king during the late 3rd millennium BCE, which predates the oracle bone script used during the late Shang dynasty—the oldest known form of writing in China—by nearly a millennium.^[5] Yu's name was not inscribed on any artifacts which were produced during the proposed era in which he lived, nor was it inscribed on the later oracle bones; his name was first inscribed on vessels which date back to the Western Zhou period (c. 1045–771 BCE).