Land of the Di People
Mythological Narrative
The Classic of Regions Within the Seas: South places this country just west of Jianmu, the great tree by which gods and shamans climbed between earth and sky. Its people have human faces on fish bodies and no feet. Illustrators through the centuries gave them human heads and arms trailing into a fish tail, making them the Shanhaijing's closest anticipation of the mermaid silhouette familiar today.
The Classic of the Great Wilderness: West records a Land of the Hu people with a notable pedigree: Lingjia, grandson of the Flame Emperor Yandi, begot the Hu people, who 'can ascend to heaven and descend again'. Commentators since the Qing scholar Hao Yixing have generally taken 'Di' and 'Hu' to be the same name corrupted in copying, and read the two passages as one country. Taken together, the fish-bodied nation carries an exalted genealogy: descendants of the Flame Emperor, neighbors of the world-tree, travelers between heaven and the waters below. The details fit together into something like a way station between gods and men.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Land of the Di People.
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Lingyu
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.
Jianmu
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.
Yandi, the Flame Emperor
The Flame Emperor Shennong, who fashioned the plow, taught agriculture, and tasted a hundred herbs, meeting seventy poisons in a single day. After Banquan his people merged with Huangdi's.
Land of the Long-Armed
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.