Hòu Yì and the Ten Suns: The Archer Who Saved the Earth

One sun on a hot day can be quite enough. Imagine ten.

The crops are burning. Plants are dying. The heat is no longer something to endure until evening; it is destroying the food people depend on.

This is the disaster at the heart of Hòu Yì’s best-known story. When ten suns rise together, an archer takes aim at the sky. In the familiar telling, nine fall and one remains, giving the world the light it needs without burning it to death.

Taiji’s 10 Suns Scorch the Earth captures the scale of the problem. But before we get to the bow, it helps to meet the family responsible for all that sunshine.

The mother of ten suns

In the Shānhǎijīng, Xī Hé (羲和) is the wife of Dì Jùn (帝俊) and the mother of ten suns. The Great Wilderness South places her at Gān Yuān, bathing the sun. ¹

It is an unexpectedly domestic image. Something capable of lighting the entire world also belongs to a family and receives a mother’s care.

The suns have a place in the landscape, too. In the Overseas East, they gather at Fú Sāng (扶桑), a great tree: nine on its lower branches, one above. ²

Suddenly, the sky has a household behind it. The lights overhead have a mother, a bathing place and a tree where they gather.

The day everything overheats

The Huáinánzǐ places the disaster in the time of Yáo (尧). Ten suns appear together, scorching crops and killing vegetation. People are left without food. Yáo sends Yì (羿) to deal with the suns and other dangers threatening the world. ³

What makes this frightening is how quickly the consequences reach the ground. The spectacle above is only one part of it. Below, a ruined harvest means empty stores and hungry families.

There’s nowhere obvious to hide from a sky that covers everyone.

One archer, nine falling suns

Yì raises his bow against something no ordinary weapon should be able to touch.

In the familiar account, he brings down nine of the ten suns. That nine-down, one-left outcome is explained in Wáng Yì’s commentary on the Questions of Heaven. It gives the rescue its shape: the danger is removed, but the world still has a sun. ⁴

Think of the change on the ground. The heat eases. There is still daylight, but it no longer comes from ten directions at once. People have a chance to grow food and live again.

That remaining sun matters as much as the nine that fall. Destroying all ten would leave another disaster behind. The feat is knowing how much to take away.

Why does the card call him Yì?

Most people searching for the sun-shooting story know its hero as Hòu Yì (后羿). Taiji’s Yì card uses the shorter name found in the Huáinánzǐ account.

There is also an ancient tradition about a ruler called Hòu Yì, famous for archery and caught up in a struggle for power. Those stories became entangled in later retellings. For this article, Hòu Yì is the familiar name of the sun-shooting hero; Yì is the name you’ll find when you open his card. ^{3, 5}

The suns weren’t his only problem

The same Huáinánzǐ passage gives Yì a formidable list of other threats to confront, including Záo Chǐ (凿齿), Jiǔ Yīng (九婴) and a great serpent. ³

You can follow one of those encounters through Záo Chǐ’s card and Battle of Yì and Záo. His bow belongs to a larger story of making a dangerous world survivable.

Another figure has a very different encounter with the sun. Kuā Fù chases it, trying to catch what Yì can strike from a distance. Set the two images beside each other—a giant running towards the sun, an archer standing beneath it—and you have two very different kinds of determination.

The relief of an ordinary sky

The most satisfying part of Hòu Yì’s victory may be what comes afterwards: people living beneath a sky that has become ordinary again.

One sun. Enough warmth. A chance for things to grow.

You can explore the Yì’s Divine Shot card, meet Xī Hé in Great Wilderness South, or visit Fú Sāng in Overseas East.

For another rescue on a cosmic scale, there is Nǚ Wā repairing the sky. She certainly has her work cut out for her too.

Sources & further reading

1. Xī Hé / 《山海经·大荒南经》羲和浴日
2. Fú Sāng / 《山海经·海外东经》
3. Ten suns and Yì / 《淮南子·本经训》
4. Nine suns fall / 《楚辞补注》卷三《天问》，王逸注
5. Hòu Yì the ruler / 《左传·襄公四年》