Chiru

The Ying River rises on Mount Qingqiu and runs south into the Marsh of Jiyi, and in its waters swarm the chiru. The Classic of the Southern Mountains describes a creature shaped entirely like a fish but wearing a human face, its call like the soft cry of a mandarin duck; the 'chi' of its name suggests a reddish body. The prescribed benefit is bluntly practical: eat it and you will not suffer scabies. It shares Mount Qingqiu with the nine-tailed fox and the guanguan bird, the mountain fielding one marvel each for beast, bird, and fish.

Human-faced fish form a family of their own in the Shanhaijing: the lingyu of the northern seaboard has a man's face with hands and feet on a fish's body, the people of the Land of Diren are fish-bodied and legless, and the northern mountains hold four-legged 'man-fish'. The chiru is the southern representative of the line. Discussions of the motif often set beside it the human-face-and-fish painted basin unearthed at Banpo near Xi'an — an image millennia older than the book, yet uncannily close to its text — and among the sources of later Chinese mermaid lore the chiru keeps a firm place.