The Archer Who Shot Down Nine Suns
Yi, often called Hou Yi, is the supreme archer of Chinese myth. The Huainanzi relates that in the time of Yao ten suns rose into the sky at once, scorching the crops and grasses so the people had nothing to eat, while monsters — Yayu, Chiseltooth, the nine-headed Jiuying, the great bird Dafeng, the giant boar Fengxi, and the long serpent Xiushe — ravaged the land. Yao sent Yi, who shot down nine of the ten suns, leaving one to light the world, then killed Chiseltooth in the wilds of Chouhua, slew the Jiuying at the Xiong River, snared Dafeng over the marsh of Qingqiu, cut the serpent at Lake Dongting, and took the boar in the Mulberry Grove. The people rejoiced.
Another chapter of the Huainanzi gives the story that shaped later folklore: Yi obtained the elixir of immortality from the Queen Mother of the West, but his wife Heng'e — later called Chang'e — stole and swallowed it and fled to the moon, leaving him bereft. Accounts of his death vary; Mencius records that his pupil Peng Meng, having learned all his master's art, decided only Yi surpassed him and killed him.
The mythic sun-shooter is regularly entangled with a historical namesake, the Hou Yi of the Youqiong clan who usurped the Xia throne from Tai Kang and was murdered by his own steward Han Zhuo, as told in the Zuozhuan. The 'Heavenly Questions' of the Chu ci already interrogates both figures in one breath.
