Shan Hai Jing Creatures: an Illustrated Bestiary

What is the Shan Hai Jing?

The Shan Hai Jing, or Classic of Mountains and Seas, is an ancient Chinese book of geography and myth. It was put together by many hands over several centuries before the Han dynasty and survives in 18 books. The first five, the Classics of the Mountains, walk through range after range in the south, west, north, east and center, listing the rivers, stones and plants of each mountain and the strange beasts and gods that live there. The later books describe distant lands, peoples and seas.

Most entries about Shan Hai Jing creatures are short and precise: what the creature looks like, what its cry sounds like, and what happens if you see it or eat it. Seeing some beasts means flood or war; eating others cures illness or keeps curses away. The scholar Guo Pu wrote notes on the book in the 4th century, and they are still printed with it today.

How this bestiary works

Each page starts from the oldest source we could find. We show the original Chinese text, our own English translation and where in the book it appears, then follow the creature through the legends that grew from it. When a famous creature is not actually in the Shan Hai Jing, like Bai Ze, we say so. The art comes from Beasts of Shanhai, our free browser game built on these creatures.

Creatures in the bestiary

• Nine-Tailed Fox 九尾狐A fox with nine tails and a cry like a baby's. It eats people, and eating it keeps curses away.
• Taotie 饕餮A goat-bodied beast with a human face and eyes under its arms, so greedy it eats itself.
• Hundun 混沌A faceless god like a red sack, with six legs and four wings. It has no eyes, yet it knows song and dance.
• Bai Ze 白泽A talking beast that knows the nature of all things. Not in the Shan Hai Jing, but often counted among its creatures.

All 43 creatures, by book

Southern Mountains, Book 1

• Boyi 猼訑 A goat with nine tails, four ears and eyes on its back. Whoever wears it knows no fear.
• Chiru 赤鱬 A red fish with a human face and a voice like a mandarin duck. Eating it keeps scabies away.
• Lushu 鹿蜀 A horse with a white head, tiger stripes and a red tail, singing as it calls. Wearing its hide blesses a family with many descendants.
• Xingxing 狌狌 A white-eared ape that crawls on all fours or runs upright like a man. Eat it and you will run fast.
• Xuangui 旋龟 A turtle with a bird's head and a viper's tail, whose voice sounds like splitting wood. Wearing it keeps deafness away.

Southern Mountains, Book 2

• Gudiao 蛊雕 A river beast shaped like an eagle with a horn. It cries like a baby and eats people.
• Lili 狸力 A pig with spurs on its legs that barks like a dog. Where it appears, the county is soon busy with great earthworks.

Southern Mountains, Book 3

• Fenghuang 凤皇 A five-colored bird like a rooster whose markings spell out virtues. When it appears, the world is at peace.

Western Mountains, Book 1

• Feiyi 肥遗 A snake with six legs and four wings from the cliffs of Mount Taihua. When it appears, great drought follows.

Western Mountains, Book 2

• Zhuyan 朱厌 An ape with a white head and red feet. When it appears, great wars follow.

Western Mountains, Book 3

• Bifang 毕方 A one-legged crane with red markings on blue and a white beak. Where it appears, strange fires break out.
• Jufu 举父 An ape-like beast with striped arms, as fierce as a leopard or tiger, famous for throwing things with great skill.
• Lu Wu 陆吾 A god with a tiger's body, nine tails, a human face and tiger claws, who guards Kunlun for the Heavenly Emperor.
• Qinyuan 钦原 A bird shaped like a bee and as big as a mandarin duck. Its sting kills birds and beasts and withers trees.
• Tiangou 天狗 A wildcat-like beast with a white head and a cry of "liu-liu". Keeping it near wards off evil.
• Tulou 土蝼 A ram with four horns that eats people, living on Kunlun Hill among the guardians of heaven's earthly capital.
• Zheng 狰 A red leopard with five tails and one horn. Its cry rings out like stone striking stone.

Western Mountains, Book 4

• Bo 駮 A white horse with a black tail, one horn and tiger fangs. It eats tigers and leopards and keeps war away.
• Luoyu 蠃鱼 A fish with bird wings and a voice like a mandarin duck. When one is seen, its town is struck by flood.
• Qiongqi 穷奇 An ox with hedgehog bristles that howls like a hound and eats people. A later book makes it a winged tiger.

Northern Mountains, Book 1

• Heluoyu 何罗鱼 A fish with one head and ten bodies that barks like a dog. Eating it cures boils.
• Mengji 孟极 A white-bodied leopard with a patterned brow that is good at lying in wait. Its cry is its own name.

Northern Mountains, Book 3

• Jingwei 精卫 A small crow-like bird with a patterned head, white beak and red feet, calling its own name as it carries stones to fill the sea.

Eastern Mountains, Book 2

• Zhuru 朱獳 A fox with fish fins that cries its own name. Wherever it appears, its land is gripped by fear.

Eastern Mountains, Book 4

• Dangkang 当康 A pig with tusks that cries its own name. When it appears, the whole world reaps a great harvest.
• Fei 蜚 An ox with a white head, one eye and a snake's tail. Rivers dry and grass dies where it walks, and plague follows.

Central Mountains, Book 2

• Huashe 化蛇 A human-faced jackal with bird wings that slithers like a snake and shouts. When it appears, its town is flooded.
• Mafu 马腹 A tiger with a human face whose cry sounds like a crying baby. It eats people.

Central Mountains, Book 4

• Xiqu 犀渠 An azure, ox-like beast with a cry like a baby's. The crying draws people in, and it eats them.

Central Mountains, Book 6

• Jiaochong 骄虫 A god like a man with two heads who rules all stinging insects. His bare mountain is where the bees live.

Central Mountains, Book 11

• Qinggeng 青耕 A blue, magpie-like bird with a white beak, white eyes and a white tail. It keeps plague away and calls its own name.

Beyond the Seas: South

• Biyi Bird 比翼鸟 Two birds, one green and one red, flying wing to wing. Later poets made them a symbol of inseparable love.

Beyond the Seas: West

• Chenghuang 乘黄 A fox-like beast with horns on its back from the land of the White People. Whoever rides it lives 2,000 years.

Beyond the Seas: East

• Tianwu 天吴 A water god with eight human-faced heads, eight legs and eight tails, its back striped blue and yellow.

Within the Seas: South

• Bashe 巴蛇 A huge snake of blue, yellow, red and black that swallows elephants and spits out the bones after three years.

Great Wilderness: East

• Kui 夔 A gray, hornless ox with a single leg. It glows like the sun and moon, roars like thunder and brings storms.
• Yinglong 应龙 A winged dragon that stores the rains. It killed Chiyou and Kuafu and now lives at the southern pole.

Great Wilderness: West

• Yufu 鱼妇 A fish withered down one side, born when snakes turned into fish. It marks the death and return of Zhuanxu.

Great Wilderness: North

• Zhulong 烛龙 A red god with a human face on a snake's body. Opening its eyes makes day; closing them makes night.

Play with the beasts

Every creature here is also a unit in Beasts of Shanhai, a free auto battler set in the world of the Shan Hai Jing. Build a team from 43 beasts, counter the five elements and clear ten trials, right in your browser.

Think you know them by sight? Beastle is our daily guessing game: one beast from this bestiary every day, and six tries to name it from a glimpse of its painting.

Or test your wider myth knowledge in our daily mythology trivia game: five open questions a day, where every rare right answer summons one of these beasts into your own collection.