Boyi Digs the First Well

Water for the Fields

Minister Boyi is credited with digging wells, freeing settlements from the rivers.

Tradition credits Boyi, Yu the Great’s chief assistant, with the invention of the well. Once water could be drawn from the ground, villages no longer needed to sit beside rivers and springs; settlements moved inland, safe from flood yet never thirsty. The well thus marks the quiet revolution that turned the floodplain into a homeland.