Jiu Ding
The jiu ding are the nine bronze tripods that the culture hero Yu the Great is said to have cast from tribute metal gathered across the Nine Provinces after he tamed the great flood, inscribing each region's creatures and things on the sides so that the people could recognize them. Passed down through the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties as the physical warrant of the Mandate of Heaven, they became the archetype of legitimate rule in Chinese historiography, and losing them was read as the fall of a dynasty. No actual ding survive, and their very existence is a matter of debate, but the story car