The Old Mother of the Waters and the Lost City Below
In Chinese folklore, Shui-mu Niang-niang, or the Old Mother of the Waters, is a legendary spirit guardian of the waters surrounding the city of Sizhou, in Anhui province.. Depicted as a smiling old woman carrying two buckets of water, she is popularly credited with the destruction of the Sizhou by flooding it every year until eventually bringing it into complete submersion in by the waters of the Hongze Lake.
Every year, Shui-mu Niang-niang caused floods in the city of Sizhou and its surrounding areas, resulting in devastation and loss of many lives. Yue Huang, the Lord of the Skies, received a report of this and sent his heavenly troops to capture her. But Shui-mu Niang-niang was clever, and always managed to avoid them. Her tricks triumphed, and the city continued to be devastated by floods year after year. One day, the heavenly troops saw Shui-mu Niang-niang near the city gate carrying two buckets of water. They were no ordinary buckets. Those two magical buckets contained the sources of the five great lakes, enough water to flood all of China. Li Lau-chuen, one of her pursuers, realized that with the two magical buckets in her disposal, openly attacking Shui-mu Niang-niang was too risky. Therefore, he brought a donkey and let it to the buckets. But the donkey could not drink it all, and left a little of the water at the bottom of the buckets. Shui-mu Niang-niang, realizing that this was yet another attempt to capture her, angrily knocked over one of the buckets with her foot, flooding the nearby town of Sizhou with what is now become a part of the Lake of Hongze. With that kick, Shui-mu Niang-niang has gone too far. Yue Huang immediately sent reinforcements to his armies, and a pursuit was methodically organized.
Sun Hou-tzu, the heavenly courier who could travel 36,000 miles in a single skip, started in pursuit and caught her, but the clever spirit slipped through his fingers. Sun Hou-tzu then asked the goddess Kuan-yin for help. The desperate run she had to do to escape from her enemy had given Shui-mu Niang-niang a good appetite. Exhausted with fatigue and hunger, Shui-mu Niang-niang caught sight of a woman selling noodles. Shui-mu Niang-niang went up to her and began to eat. She had only eaten half a bowl of the noodles when it changed in her stomach into iron chains, which wound round her intestines. The end of the chain protruded from her mouth, and the contents of the bowl became another long chain powerfully tying her body and stopping her from making any attempt to escape. The noodle-seller was Kuan-yin in disguise who had conceived this strategy to punish Shui-mu Niang-niang who had killed a whole city. Kuan-yin ordered Sun Hou-tzu to take her down a deep well at the foot of a mountain in Hsue-i Hsien and chain her there. It is there that Shui-mu Niang-niang is said chained for all time. To this day, when the water is low in the well, one can see the chains that bind her.
The story of Shui-mu Niang-niang is only one of the many stories attributed to the waters of China. It is an indication of these stories’ popularity that P’an Chi-hsun, an Imperial Commissioner for the Yellow River waterway between 1565 and 1592, considered one of the greatest hydraulic engineers in Chinese history, recognized the need to immediately address it in his “Critical Discussion of River Schemes” where he says although the Yellow River, and by extension, the rivers in the area, is credited with a Spirit, it is nothing but “the nature of water”.
Indeed there was a scientific reason for the submersion of Sizhou. Chinese historians place the submersion of Sizhou in 1680 CE, citing the change of course of the Yellow River and its merging with Huai River as the reason. This phenomena was by no means new. The Yellow River has been noted for its extremely heavy annual sediment load and for the frequent change of its lower course over the last 5,000 years. The submersion of Sizhou was not an instant phenomena. This fact was even acknowledge as the legend of the Old Mother of the Waters also says that she periodically flooded Sizhou and its surrounding areas instead of instantly submerging the city and everyone in it.
The biggest man-made event which led to the submersion of Sizhou happened in 1128. In an attempt to block the northern nomadic cavalry forim invading northern China, the dikes at Ligudu, Henan province was breached, and the river was diverted outward through Jiangsu province to the Yellow River, thus changing the course of the Yellow River from going north to the Huai River to the southern area and continued flowing there for the next 726 years (1128 CE -1854 CE), flooding an extensive area of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, creating Hongze Lake as we know it today. As a result, the city of Sizhou was completely submerged.
The ruins of Sizhou have been found in the present lake. This event is well documented in Chinese records and has been staged as a well known act in the Beijing Opera which attributed the drowing of the city to Shui-nu Niang-niang.
