THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: South gives the country a single line: its people have an aperture in the chest. The Huainanzi counts a 'people of the pierced chest' among the thirty-six countries beyond the seas. Illustrated editions of the Shanhaijing usually show bare-chested figures with a clean tunnel through the torso, and often add a practical touch: dignitaries travel not by sedan chair but slung on a pole run through the chest-hole, carried between two bearers.
Zhang Hua's Bowuzhi (Records of Diverse Matters, 3rd century) supplies an origin tale. After Yu executed the chieftain Fangfeng for arriving late to the assembly at Kuaiji, two of Fangfeng's old retainers later encountered Yu on his progress beyond the seas. Grief and anger moved them to shoot at him; thunder and storm answered, and the two men, knowing themselves doomed, drove blades through their own hearts. Yu pitied their loyalty and had the wounds packed with the herb of deathlessness. They revived, but the channel through the chest remained, and their descendants became the pierced-chest people.
