Gun (, lit. "big fish"), also known as Count of Chong (), is a figure in Chinese mythology, sometimes noted as the father of Yu the Great, the founder of the Xia dynasty. Gun was appointed to the task of controlling the Great Flood by Emperor Yao on the advice of the Four Mountains. Gun used dykes to try to stop the flooding but the dykes collapsed, killing many people.
According to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, Gun's father was Zhuanxu, grandfather was Changyi, and great-grandfather was the Yellow Emperor, Changyi & Gun being mere officials, not emperors. Book of Han, quoting Lord Yu Imperial Lineage, stated that Gun was a five-generation-descendant of Zhuanxu. The Classic of Mountains and Seas stated that Gun (also known as "White Horse" ) was the son of LuómÃÂng (), who in turn was the son of the Yellow Emperor. Also in many versions of the mythology, Gun appears as a demi-god. In legends, he even discovered some of the secrets of the gods.
In order to make dykes that would ward off floods, he stole Xirang () (self-renewing soil) from the gods. After the dykes were finished, when the water levels rose, the magical earth of the dyke also rose to keep the water out. It worked very well at first, but when the dykes rose too high (in the legend, they rose to nine ), they collapsed, resulting in the death of many people in the subsequent flood. Some legends say that Gun was executed by Emperor Shun on Feather Mountain (at the present day Lianyungang, Jiangsu) with the sword of Wu, other sources however state that he committed suicide by jumping into an abyss, transformed into an animal and became the god of the abyss. Before his death he told his son, Yu the Great, to finish his job.
Classic of Mountains and Seas also records that Gun has family ties to "Happy Head", also known as "Happy Helmet", one of the Four Criminals. In turn, Zhang Shoujie's Correct Meanings of Records of the Grand Historian () identifies Gun with the Taowu ("Block-Stump"), another of those four.
The Book of Rites records the Xia dynasty as giving jiao é sacrifices to Gun as the individual to receive the Mandate of Heaven and pass it down to Yu the Great. This is placed in opposition to the Shang dynasty giving sacrifice to Ming, the Youyu-shi doing so to Emperor Ku, and the Zhou dynasty doing so to Houji.
According to Schuessler (2009), (standard Chinese < Old Chinese ) is the same word as ( < OC ) and ( < OC ), the latter being a mythical giant fish mentioned in Zhuangzi.
( version) quotes "Records of Natural Conditions and Social Customs" () that the is also colloquially known as (literally: "sea loach"), which in turn has been identied with "bull-whales and cow-whales" by Emperor Yuan of Liang in his treatise ( "Master of the Golden Chamber").
In his treatise "Commentaries on a miscellany of marine creatures in Fujian" (), Ming scholar Tu Benjun () states that the is also called . Wolfram Eberhard (1968) suggests that Chinese texts' descriptions of as a "naked one" and "dark fish" () fit the eel.