Emperor Yáo 尧 = a humble legendary ruler
Dānzhū 丹朱 = his obnoxious son
Shùn 舜 = a filial legendary ruler, wisely chosen by Yáo instead of Dānzhū
Emperor Yáo 尧 (reign 01a-8) is famous for his humility. His palace was an ordinary peasant’s hut; his food was as simple as anybody else’s, served on plain pottery; he wore coarse clothing; and he hadn’t even a single servant.
When his people were hungry, he blamed himself. Even when people committed crimes, Yáo regarded the root cause as being his own mis-governance.
Because of his humility, Yáo inspired great loyalty, and people followed his example, helping each other in hardship, and working together in harmony.
In those hallowed days, people often lived to be several hundred years old, the result of eating a kind of pine nut. Yáo had such pine nuts too, but was too busy to eat them, so he lived only a little past a hundred years.
Yáo’s son was an incompetent and malicious person named Dānzhū 丹朱, and it was obvious to Yáo that allowing Dānzhū to succeed him as emperor would bring hardship to the people, so he sought the most virtuous lad in the land to be his successor and settled on Shùn 舜 (reign 01a-9), famed for his filial piety. (Shùn is one of the Twenty-four Filial Exemplars, described in a text translated elsewhere in this web site.)
Yáo’s act in transmitting the throne to Shùn rather than to his unpleasant son has been regarded down through the ages as one of the noblest moments in history.