Yu (in the 11th century BC), also known as Yuxiongzi or Yuzi, was the ancestor of the state of Chu in the Spring and Autumn Period. It was said that he was a tutor of King Wen of Zhou. Later, as a result of his ancestors’ loyal service to the former kings of Zhou, Xiong Yi, his great-grandson Xiong Yi at the time of King Cheng of Zhou (reigned 1042–1021 BC) received a grant of land around Danyang (present-day Zigui County, Yichang City), and then began the arduous task of clearing the thorny undergrowth from the foothills of the Jingshan Mountains so that his people could establish the state of Chu and make sacrifices to the Zhou king. King Cheng also gave Xiong Yi the hereditary title of Zi, roughly equivalent to a viscount.

Originally, Yuxiong descended from the mythical Yellow Emperor and his grandson and successor Zhuanxu. Zhuanxu\'s great-grandson Wuhui was put in charge of fire by Emperor Ku and given the title Zhurong. Wuhui’s son Luzhong had six sons, all born by Caesarian section. The youngest son Jilian adopted the ancestral surname Mi and had a son named Fuju. Xuexiong was Fuju’s son. Yuxiong\'s ancestral surname was Mi, but his son and successor Xiong Li adopted the second character of his name--Xiong, literally “bear”--as the royal clan name of the state of Chu, which is now the one of the most common surnames in China.

The territory of the state of Chu covered primarily today’s western-Hubei mountainous areas and the Jianghan Plain, and later gradually extended westwards along the Yangtze River to the east of the present-day Sichuan Province, northwards to the present-day Nanyang Basin and Danjiang Valley along the Hanshui River, southwards to the present-day Dongting Lake Plain of in the north of Hunan Province and eastwards to the present-day, and eastwards along the Huaishui River and the Yangtze River to the south-east part of present-day He’nan Province, the north of Anhui Province, the north of Jiangxi Province and the south of Shandong Province, including part of Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province.