The Jingwei Bird That Fills the Sea

What the Shan Hai Jing says

The story of Jingwei is told in the Shan Hai Jing itself, in the third book of the Northern Mountains. The text reaches Mount Fajiu, covered in zhe trees, a relative of the mulberry, and describes a bird that lives there. It looks like a crow, with a patterned head, a white beak and red feet, and its call is its own name: jingwei.

Then the book does something it rarely does and tells a story. The bird was once a girl called Nü Wa (not the creator goddess Nüwa, whose name uses a different character), the youngest daughter of the Flame Emperor, Yandi. She went to play in the Eastern Sea, drowned and never came back, and so she became the Jingwei. Ever since, she has carried twigs and stones from the western hills in her beak and dropped them into the Eastern Sea to fill it up.

Jingwei fills the sea

The phrase jingwei tian hai, "Jingwei fills the sea", became a Chinese idiom. It describes holding to a goal with unbreakable will, even when the task is impossible: a single small bird against the whole ocean. Depending on who uses it, it can praise determination or gently mock a hopeless effort, but in most modern usage it is admiration. The story is also one of revenge and grief. The sea took her life, and her answer is to spend that life, one twig at a time, trying to undo it. The Shan Hai Jing does not say whether she will ever succeed.

Tao Yuanming and later writers

The best-known poem about Jingwei comes from the poet Tao Yuanming, who lived around 400 AD and wrote a series of thirteen poems titled Reading the Shan Hai Jing. In one of them he sets Jingwei, holding a tiny twig to fill the vast sea, beside Xingtian, the headless giant who keeps dancing with shield and axe. For Tao, both are images of a will that does not die even when the body is lost. The Shuyi Ji, a later book of marvels attributed to Ren Fang, gives other names for the bird, such as the "oath bird" and the "wronged bird", but the core story has stayed the one in the Shan Hai Jing.

Jingwei in our game

In Beasts of Shanhai Jingwei is a cheap, small bird with a stubborn shield. Her Golden Body blocks the first hit of every battle, and once it breaks she fights harder, in the spirit of a bird that refuses to give up. She sits in the same water element as other sea and river creatures such as the Kui. At 1 Gold, she is one of the cheapest beasts in the game.

Jingwei, the Sea-Filler in Beasts of Shanhai

In our free browser game Beasts of Shanhai, Jingwei, the Sea-Filler is a Water beast that costs 1 Gold. Its skill is Fill the Sea. Golden Body: it blocks the first hit each battle, and when the Golden Body breaks it gains +50% attack for the rest of the battle. At three stars the bonus becomes +100% attack.

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