Xiangliu
Mythological Narrative
The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: North introduces it in two clauses: Xiangliu, minister to the water god Gonggong, has nine heads that feed on nine mountains at once, and wherever its body presses, the ground caves into marsh and ravine. The nine heads are human-faced; the single body is that of a green serpent. The water it left behind was bitter, and no beast could live near it.
When Yu the Great tamed the flood he killed Xiangliu, and the text dwells on the aftermath rather than the fight. The creature's blood was so rank that the five grains would not grow in soil it had touched. Yu dug the tainted earth out and refilled the pit; three times he filled it and three times it slumped. In the end he gave up, made the spot a pond, and used the spoil to raise terraces for the gods, north of Kunlun. The Classic of the Great Wilderness: North tells the same episode under the name Xiangyao. The detail that the monster's poison outlasted the monster gives Xiangliu a distinct place in the flood-taming cycle, and its nine-headed serpent form is a fixture of modern fantasy and games.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Xiangliu.
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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.
Gonggong
Primeval water god who, defeated in his contest with Zhuanxu for the throne, rammed Mount Buzhou in fury, snapping the pillar of heaven — which is why the stars drift northwest and the rivers run southeast.
Yu the Great
He tamed the great flood by dredging instead of damming, passing his own gate three times in thirteen years without entering, mapped the Nine Provinces, cast the Nine Tripods, and fathered the Xia dynasty.
Jiufeng
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.