Gudiao, the Man-Eating Eagle Beast of the Shan Hai Jing
The Gudiao lives in the river below Mount Luwu: it looks like an eagle with a horn, cries like a baby, and eats people.
- Chinese name
- 蛊雕 (gǔdiāo)
- Oldest source
- Shan Hai Jing, Southern Mountains, Book 2
- Where it lives
- Mount Luwu
- In the game
- Fire beast · 1 Gold · Bloodthirst
What the Shan Hai Jing says
Mount Luwu is in the second book of the Southern Mountains. The text describes it as bare of plants but rich in metal and stone, with a river rising there and flowing south. In the water lives a beast called the Gudiao. It looks like an eagle with a horn, its voice sounds like a baby crying, and it eats people. That is the whole entry: a shape, a sound and a danger.
水有兽焉，名曰蛊雕，其状如雕而有角，其音如婴儿之音，是食人。
In the water lives a beast called the Gudiao, like an eagle with a horn, crying like a baby. It eats people.
The entry is odd in a revealing way. The Gudiao is called a beast, not a bird, though it is shaped like an eagle, and it lives in the water rather than the sky. The Shan Hai Jing often builds its monsters from mismatched parts, and the Gudiao joins a bird of prey, a horn and a river into one hunter that could strike from anywhere.
The baby's cry
A cry like a baby is one of the book's recurring warnings. The Nine-Tailed Fox of Mount Qingqiu and the Paoxiao that later writers linked to the Taotie also cry like babies, and all three eat people. The book never explains the pattern, but its effect is easy to feel: a sound that would draw a person closer turns out to be the call of a predator. Readers of the Shan Hai Jing learned to be wary of crying in the wild.
The name and its neighbors
The name is made of two words. Gu is the word for poison and curses, the same gu that eating the nine-tailed fox protects against, and diao means a large bird of prey, an eagle or vulture. The second Southern range has other beasts of ill omen: the Lili, a pig-like beast with spurs whose appearance means heavy labor on earthworks for its county, and the changyou, an ape-like beast with four ears whose appearance brings floods.
Gudiao in Beasts of Shanhai
In Beasts of Shanhai, our browser game built on these creatures, the Gudiao feeds on what it kills. It is a cheap Fire beast with lifesteal: half of the damage it deals comes back to it as health, and at three stars it heals the full amount. Fragile at first, it can outlast much bigger foes if it keeps landing hits, which suits a man-eater that survives on its prey.
Horned Eagle in Beasts of Shanhai
In our free browser game Beasts of Shanhai, Horned Eagle is a Fire beast that costs 1 Gold. Its skill is Bloodthirst. Lifesteal: heals half the damage it deals. At three stars the lifesteal heals the full damage.
Questions
What is a gudiao?
The gudiao is a beast in the Shan Hai Jing that lives in the water below Mount Luwu. It looks like an eagle with a horn and eats people.
What does the gudiao sound like?
The Shan Hai Jing says its voice sounds like a baby crying.
Is the gudiao a bird?
It is shaped like an eagle, but the Shan Hai Jing calls it a beast and says it lives in the water.
More creatures
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.
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.
Bashe 巴蛇A huge snake of blue, yellow, red and black that swallows elephants and spits out the bones after three years.