Magic Oxen: Containing Floods

By August 2, at least 302 people had died and some 50 were registered as missing due to the catastrophic floods that swept through parts of central China’s Henan Province after days of torrential downpours in mid-July. By 7am on August 9, nearly 15 million people in Henan had been affected by the floods. In Europe, about 200 people died in the flood which hit Germany and Belgium also in mid-July. For thousands of years, China suffered from severe floods. Ancient Chinese people dealt with the problem in two ways. One was scientific. They built big hydraulic projects like the Dujiangyan Irrigation System in today’s Sichuan Province which has been in operation for more than 2,000 years, and still works today. It made the Chengdu Plain a land of plenty. The other is superstition. They believed that animals, typically the ox, had magic powers that enabled them to contain floods. This belief, or expectation that something magic can overwhelm evil has a long history.