‘Cause I’m the Taxman: The Voyages of Yu Gong

The Tribute of Yu (禹貢) is one of the oldest mythological texts related to Chinese statehood. Yu was a semi-mythical god-king who traveled around the nine states noting what each of these states had that was worth giving as tribute to the emperor. The text is almost certainly not as old as it purports to be, but is still an incredibly important piece for thinking about what state and empire mean in the earliest Chinese contexts. We attempt to explore what is going on in this famous passage, one of the most important pieces in the Book of Documents (尚書).

The route Yu took on his travels