Definition of "Xia"

But records of the first dynasty, that of the Xia, contain stories of a Great Flood with a Noah-like savior, the Emperor Yu, who gained the mandate of heaven after dredging canals to dispel the floodwaters and make the land safe. Historians have long wondered whether this flood account was a creation-style myth, the folk memory of a real event, or some mixture of the two. Some have dismissed the story of Emperor Yu as a fiction intended to justify centralized rule and, in the absence of any evidence of a massive flood at the time, many have regarded the stories of the Xia dynasty as more myth than history.

2016 August 4, Nicholas Wade, “Scientific Evidence of Flood May Give Credence to Legend of China’s First Dynasty”, in The New York Times‎, archived from the original on 2016-08-04, Science‎