Zhuanxu

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Gaoyang is also a city located in the Chinese province of Hebei.

Emperor Zhuanxu. Mural painting from Han Dynasty.

Zhuanxu (simplified Chinese: 颛顼; traditional Chinese: 顓頊; pinyin: Zhuānxū), also known as Gaoyang (高陽) is a monarch of ancient China.

A grandson of the Yellow Emperor, Zhuanxu led the Shi clan in an eastward migration to present-day Shandong, where intermarriages with the Dongyi clan enlarged and augmented their tribal influences. At age twenty, he became their sovereign, going on to rule for seventy-eight years until his death.

He made contributions to a unified calendar, astrology, religion reforms to oppose shamanism, upheld the patriarchal (as opposed to the previous matriarchal) system, and forbade close-kin marriage. Zhuanxu is held by many to be one of the Five Emperors.

Zhuanxu was succeeded by his cousin's son, Ku. In the Shiji, he criticized one of his sons for being a dullard. Since only two sons were named, it might have been Gun, father of Yu the Great or Qiongchan, the ancestor of Shun. Yao had also criticized Gun for being incompetent and ruinous. The Shiji labelled Qiongchan an insignificant commoner though it does not mention how he fell from grace. He also had eight unnamed sons of good repute that later worked for Shun.

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