Classic of Mountains and Seas

A man-eating beast of Mount Sanwei: shaped like an ox, white-bodied with four horns, its long hair hanging like a straw rain-cape.

A monstrous snake that swallows elephants whole and disgorges the bones only after three years; those bones, taken as medicine, cure ailments of heart and belly. Its body is mottled green, yellow, red, and black.

A one-legged, crane-like bird of Mount Zhang'e with green plumage, red markings and a white beak, calling its own name; wherever it appears, unexplained fires break out.

A beast of Mount Ji shaped like a goat, with nine tails, four ears, and eyes set on its back; wearing its hide was said to banish fear.

A country whose people wade into the water and catch fish bare-handed, one in each fist. Old glosses say their arms are so long the hands trail on the ground.

A giant serpent of Daxian Mountain, covered in bristles like boar hair, its voice like the wooden clapper of a night watchman. Early commentary puts its length at a hundred xun — nearly two hundred metres.

A wife of Di Jun who bore twelve moons in the western wilderness and bathed them — the twelve months personified. Scholars widely take her as the prototype of the moon goddess Chang'e.

A beast of Mount Changyou shaped like a macaque but with four ears, its voice like a human groan; whichever district it appears in will suffer great floods.

A fish of the Ying River on Mount Qingqiu, wholly fish-bodied but with a human face and a call like a mandarin duck; eating it was said to prevent scabies.

A country of huge people in the eastern seas, glimpsed sitting at work in their boats; another chapter records a giants' market out on the open sea.

An auspicious beast of Qin Mountain, shaped like a pig with prominent tusks, its cry naming itself. When it appears, the world is due a great harvest.

A high god found only in the Great Wilderness and final chapters: his wife Xihe bore the ten suns, Changxi the twelve moons, and his descendants invented boats, carts, zithers, song and craft.

A country west of the sky-ladder tree Jianmu whose people have human faces and fish bodies without feet. Commentators identify them with the heaven-climbing Hu people, descendants of the Flame Emperor.

A divine personage known only through relics in the seventh central sequence: five-colored gaming stones on Mount Xiuyu, a feasting-ground for the hundred gods on Mount Guzhong, and a cold spring called his draught.

Two goddesses of Mount Dongting who range the Yangtze deeps; their every passage raises whirlwind and storm. Later tradition merged them with Ehuang and Nüying, consorts of Shun and spirits of the Xiang.

God of Mount Tian: a sack-like body red as cinnabar fire, six legs, four wings, no face at all, yet a master of song and dance — long identified with Hundun, the primal Chaos.

A beast of Beixiao Mountain: a tiger's frame, all white, with a dog's head, a horse's tail, and a boar's bristling mane. The second character of its name is a rare graph coined for it; Guo Pu glosses it 'gu'.

A beast of Danxun Mountain: a rat with a hare's head and a deer-like body, howling like a dog and flying by means of its tail. Its flesh was said to prevent bloating and guard against all poisons.

A serpent of Mount Taihua with six legs and four wings whose appearance brings drought to the whole world; Guo Pu records that it was seen at Mount Yang in the days of King Tang.

A one-eyed horror of Tai Mountain: an ox's body with a white head and a snake's tail. Water dries where it wades, grass dies where it treads, and its appearance brings pestilence across the world.

The divine bird of Mount Danxue, shaped like a fowl in five colors, its plumage patterned with the characters for virtue, duty, ritual, benevolence, and trust; it sings and dances of itself, and its appearance means peace under heaven.

In the sunrise valley of Tanggu grows the Fusang tree where the ten suns roost — nine on the lower branches, one on the upper — carried into the sky by crows, one returning as the next departs.

A beast of Mount Ao'an shaped like a white deer but bearing four horns; wherever it appears, that town will be struck by a great flood.

Spirit of Mount Feng who haunts the Qingling pool, surfacing in light; wherever he appears, that state falls to ruin. Han court exorcists chanted to lock him back in his pool.

A man-eating monster of the Zegeng River below Mount Luwu, shaped like a great eagle but crowned with a horn, its voice the cry of a human infant.

The dragon-bodied, human-faced son of Mount Zhong who murdered the god Baojiang, was executed by the High God east of the mountain, and rose again as the drought-bird Jun.

A bird of Mount Qingqiu shaped like a turtledove, its call like people scolding one another; wearing its feathers was said to keep one from confusion.

A land in the far south whose people have a hole running clean through the chest. Later legend traces the opening to men Yu revived with the herb of deathlessness after they had stabbed their own hearts.

As the flood swelled to heaven, Gun stole the self-growing earth to dam it without the god's leave; Zhurong executed him at Yushan. From Gun's body Yu was born and charged to settle the Nine Provinces.

A strange fish of the Qiao River below Qiaoming Mountain: a single head trailing ten bodies, barking like a dog. Eating it was said to cure abscesses.

A monster of Yan Mountain: a pig's body with a human face, yellow with a red tail, crying like an infant. It eats men as well as insects and snakes, and its appearance brings floods across the world.

A jiao-dragon of the Yin River below Mount Daoguo, with a fish's body and a serpent's tail, calling like a mandarin duck; eating it prevents swellings and cures hemorrhoids.

A beast of Mount Yaoguang shaped like a man but bristled like a boar, hibernating in caves through winter, its cry like chopping wood; its appearance means mass forced labor for the county.

A creature of Mount Yang's waters with a human face, a jackal's body and bird's wings, moving with a serpent's crawl; its voice is a shouted rebuke, its appearance a flood warning.

A wildcat-like beast of Mount Yiwang with a single eye and three tails, its cry like a hundred voices at once; it wards off evil, and worn on the body it cures jaundice.

God of Mount Guang with a human body and a dragon's head, who haunts the deep pools of the Zhang River; whirlwind and rainstorm attend his every coming and going.

A god-tree at the world's center on the plain of Duguang: green leaves, purple trunk, black flowers, yellow fruit, a hundred ren tall without side branches. Fuxi climbed it between heaven and earth; at noon it casts no shadow.

God of Mount Pingfeng, human in shape with two heads, master of all stinging insects; his rite offers a single rooster that is prayed over and released unharmed.

Nüwa, youngest daughter of the Flame Emperor, drowned in the Eastern Sea and became a small bird with a patterned head, white beak, and red feet, forever dropping twigs and pebbles into the sea that killed her.

A god on Heaven's Cabinet Mountain at the northern pole: nine human-faced heads on one bird body. Read as a product of Chu phoenix worship, and the source of the later ominous nine-headed bird.

A fox with nine tails from Mount Qingqiu whose cry sounds like a wailing infant; it eats people, yet its flesh wards off gu sorcery. Later ages recast it from royal omen to bewitching temptress.

A small beast of Mount Yidi shaped like a fei-rat, with white ears and a white muzzle; wherever it appears, that state will raise great armies.

An eastern country whose people go robed, capped, and sword-girt, each attended by two striped tigers, and yield to one another in all things. There grows the xunhua plant, blooming at dawn and dead by dusk.

Guardian of Kunlun's nine gates: a body like a giant tiger crowned with nine human-faced heads, standing atop the mountain facing east, warding the abode of the hundred gods.

A giant who raced the sun to its setting place. He drank the Yellow River and the Wei dry, died of thirst before reaching the Great Marsh, and his cast-off staff became a peach grove.

An ox-like beast with one leg on an island mountain in the Eastern Sea — grey-bodied, hornless, glowing like sun and moon, roaring like thunder. The Yellow Emperor made its hide into a drum heard five hundred li away.

The Supreme God's lower capital: eight hundred li square and ten thousand ren high, with jade-railed wells and nine gates on each face guarded by the Kaiming beast, the dwelling place of the hundred gods.

A beast of Mount Chanyuan shaped like a wildcat with long hair, at once male and female in one body; eating its flesh was said to free one from jealousy.

A god of Lake Lei with a dragon's body and a human head who makes thunder by drumming his own belly. Apocryphal tradition says Huaxu trod in a giant footprint by this lake and conceived Fuxi.

A creature of the northern seas: a human face, human hands and feet, joined to the body of a fish. One of the earliest Chinese images of the merfolk.

A man-eater of Fuli Mountain: a fox in outline, but with nine heads, nine tails, and tiger's claws, crying like an infant. The name is also written Longzhi with a different second graph.

A fish of Mount Di shaped like an ox yet living on hillsides, with a serpent's tail and wings sprouting beneath its ribs; it dies each winter and revives each summer, and eating it prevents tumorous swellings.

A beast of Mount Niuyang shaped like a horse with a white head, tiger stripes, and a red tail, whose call sounds like human song; wearing its hide was said to bless one with descendants.

An auspicious five-colored bird of Mount Nüchuang, pheasant-like in form, whose appearance brings peace to the world; later merged with the phoenix family and lodged in the lore of mirrors and chariot bells.

Tutelary god of the Mound of Kunlun: tiger-bodied with nine tails, a human face and tiger claws, keeper of heaven's nine regions and the seasons of the God's park.

A man-eating beast of Mount Manqu with a human face on a tiger's body, whose cry mimics a wailing infant; the Yi River rises from its mountain.

A protective beast of Qiaoming Mountain, shaped like a porcupine with scarlet bristles and a rolling 'liu-liu' cry. Keeping it, or its painted image, was believed to ward off evil.

A serpent of Mount Xian's waters with four wings and a call like a struck stone chime; wherever it appears, that town will suffer drought — counterpart to the flood-bringing Huashe.

The collective mountain gods of the three southern ranges: bird-bodied and dragon-headed in the first, dragon-bodied and bird-headed in the second, dragon-bodied and human-faced in the third, each with prescribed rites.

The Yellow Emperor's daughter in blue-green robes. Sent down to stop Chiyou's storm, she could never reascend; wherever she stays no rain falls, and people drive her off shouting 'Goddess, go north!'

Ten gods lying athwart the road on the plain of Liguang, transformed from the entrails of Nüwa — the only mention of Nüwa in the entire Classic of Mountains and Seas.

A man-eater of Gouwu Mountain: goat's body, human face, eyes set in its armpits, tiger's teeth and human hands, crying like an infant. Guo Pu's commentary identifies it as the taotie.

A western country of one-armed, three-eyed people who ride patterned horses. The Bowuzhi credits them with ingenious machines, including a wind-riding flying chariot that once drifted all the way to Tang's domain.

A bird of Mount Yiwang like a crow with three heads and six tails, given to laughter; worn on the body it keeps nightmares away and wards off evil.

A mountain of the eastern third guideway reached across water and flowing sands: two hundred li of bare rock, great serpents, and jade, with a forty-li marsh of welling springs, sea turtles, and six-legged gege fish.

A venomous bird of Kunlun, wasp-shaped but the size of a mandarin duck; birds and beasts it stings die outright, and trees it stings wither.

A famous peak near the eastern end of the first southern range, with jade on its south slope and green mineral pigment on its north; home to the nine-tailed fox, the guanguan bird, and the human-faced chiru fish.

A man-eating beast of Mount Gui, ox-like with porcupine bristles; later counted among the Four Fiends, said to devour the loyal and reward the wicked.

A beast of Yu'e Mountain: hare's body, bird's beak, owl's eyes, snake's tail, playing dead at the sight of people. Its appearance heralds locust plagues. Two millennia later the name was borrowed for the armadillo.

A bird of Mount Daoguo shaped like a small heron but white-headed, with a human face and three legs, forever calling out its own name.

Three azure birds roosting on Mount Sanwei who fetch food for the Queen Mother of the West; from Han times they became her heralds, and 'azure bird' has meant 'messenger' in Chinese ever since.

A wilderness nation whose people have one head and three bodies, born of Di Jun's wife Ehuang. Surnamed Yao, they eat millet and command four beasts; another chapter places them north of Qi of the Xia.

A far-southern country whose people bear three heads on a single body; the Huainanzi lists them among the thirty-six countries beyond the seas as the Three-Headed Folk.

A beast of Mount Ku shaped like a pig, red as cinnabar fire, and fond of cursing — the only creature in the whole classic said to revile people.

A scarlet pheasant-like bird of Jade Mountain that feeds on fish and calls like a deer; whichever kingdom it appears in will suffer great floods.

The auspicious god of Mount He, human in form with a tiger's tail, moving in light and able to stir the qi of heaven and earth — blamed by commentators for the storm that once bewildered King Kongjia of Xia.

A wildcat-like, white-headed beast of Mount Yin whose cry sounds 'liu-liu'; it wards off evil — a benign original quite unlike the later moon-devouring Tiangou.

A beast of Macheng Mountain shaped like a white dog with a black head. The moment it sees a person it takes to the air, crying out what sounds like its own name.

The water god of Sunrise Valley, styled Lord of Waters: a beast with eight human-faced heads, eight legs, and eight tails, colored green and yellow throughout. Du Fu still names it as an embroidery motif.

A beast of Mount Tai in the eastern first guideway: shaped like a pig, yet it grows pearls inside its body, and its cry names itself. Guo Pu's verse praises it as 'clad in coarse cloth, harbouring pearls'.

A man-eating beast of the Mound of Kunlun, shaped like a ram with four horns, sharing the High God's lower capital with the warden Luwu and the venomous Qinyuan.

A strange bird of Mount Yuci, owl-bodied with a human face and one leg, active in winter and dormant in summer; wearing its feathers protects a person from thunder.

A figure gripping a bird in both hands and eating its head. He tamed oxen and was murdered for his herds while lodging in Youyi — the 'High Ancestor Hai' lavishly sacrificed to in oracle-bone inscriptions.

A beast of Mount Fanggao shaped like a bee, with a forked tail and a tongue set backwards, given to loud cries — a counterpart to the cursing Shangao of the same sequence.

A flying fish of the River Guan with a carp's body and bird's wings, white-headed and red-beaked, that flies by night from the western sea to the eastern; its appearance heralds a great harvest.

Warden spirit of Mount Qingyao — human face over leopard markings, slim waist, white teeth, metal earrings, a voice like chiming jade; the mountain is the supreme god's hidden capital and 'befits women.'

A nation of shamans in the far west, each gripping a green snake in the right hand and a red one in the left; Mount Dengbao is their ladder to heaven, and all medicines grow on nearby Mount Ling.

Wife of Di Jun, dwelling in her own country beyond the southeastern sea, she bore the ten suns and bathes them in the Sweet Gulf; later tradition made her the sun's charioteer.

A man-eating beast of Mount Li shaped like an ox, its whole body dark blue-grey, its voice a wailing infant — the same lure used by the Mafu of the same Yi-Luo basin.

Minister to the flood god Gonggong: nine human heads on a green serpent body, feeding on nine mountains at once. Yu slew it; its reeking blood ruined the soil, which collapsed three times when filled.

A god beheaded for challenging the Supreme God's throne. With nipples for eyes and navel for mouth, he brandishes shield and axe in an endless war dance.

A beast of Mount Zhaoyao shaped like a macaque with white ears, moving on all fours or walking upright like a man; eating its flesh was said to make one a swift runner.

A turtle of the Guai River below Mount Niuyang, with a bird's head and a viper's tail, its call like wood splitting; worn on the body it guards against deafness and cures calluses.

Once a snake-bodied, human-faced god, murdered by Erfu and his minister Wei. Shamans tended the corpse with drugs of deathlessness; it revived as a dragon-headed man-eater of the Weak River, later slain by the archer Yi.

A serpent-bodied god with a human head at either end, long as a chariot shaft, in purple robes and a felt cap. A ruler who feasts it attains hegemony — the Weiyi seen by Duke Huan of Qi.

Last mountain of the fourth western guideway, rich in cinnabar trees and jade and haunted by the Shuhu; Qu Yuan's line 'gazing at Yanzi, do not press near' made it the byword for sunset.

A winged dragon who killed Chiyou and Kuafu for the Yellow Emperor, then could not return to heaven. It settled in the far south, which is why the south is rainy; drought-struck people mimicked its shape to call rain.

Tutelary god of the High God's garden on Mount Huaijiang: horse-bodied and human-faced, tiger-striped and bird-winged, patrolling the four seas with heaven's commands.

A bird of Mount Lingqiu shaped like an owl, with a human face, four eyes, and ears, calling out its own name; wherever it appears, great drought follows across the land.

A beast of Zhu Mountain: a horse's frame with goat's eyes, four horns, and an ox's tail, howling like a dog. When it appears, the state fills with cunning schemers.

Spirit of Mount Fufu, human in form with two snakes held about his body, who ranges the deep pools of the Yangtze and comes and goes wrapped in light.

A fish in the western wilderness withered along one side, called Yufu. When the north wind blows and springs surge, snakes turn into fish — and the god Zhuanxu, it is said, revived from death by taking this fish body.

A country in the far south whose long-headed people grow feathers over their bodies. Guo Pu's commentary adds that they hatch from eggs and can fly, though never far.

The sea god on the islets of the North Sea: human face, bird body, two green snakes at his ears, two red snakes under his feet. Grandson of the Yellow Emperor, also called Yujing, styled Xuanming.

A beast of Mount Zhang'e shaped like a scarlet leopard, with a single horn and five tails, its voice like stones striking together.

A beast of Danzhang Mountain: leopard's body with a long tail, human head, ox ears, a single eye, and a booming roar. It walks with its tail in its mouth and coils it up when it rests.

A scarlet, human-faced, serpent-bodied god of Mount Zhangwei: day when its eyes open, night when they close, winter when it inhales, summer when it exhales. Called Zhuyin in another chapter, a thousand li long.

A beast of Geng Mountain shaped like a fox but bearing fish-fin wings, its cry naming itself. Wherever it appears, the state is seized by fear.