Kuafu

'Kuafu chases the sun' is a four-character idiom in ordinary modern Chinese, used both for heroic overreach and for futility, and Chinese readers have been arguing about which since at least the Han. The record keeps both readings because the tradition does. His staff, thrown down as he died, became a forest of peach trees — the one part of the story that is not about failure.

Domains

• giants
• the sun

Sources

• Kuafu is a giant of the Shanhaijing who chased the sun to stop it setting, drank the Yellow River and the Wei dry, and died of thirst short of the northern lake.: Reference treatments of Kuafu and the Shanhaijing myth of chasing the sun. (secondary)