Monsters of the Shān Hǎi Jīng, Part 1

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the Shān Hǎi Jīng or “Classic of Mountains and Seas,” an ancient Chinese text that compiles the mythic geography and fantastic creatures of the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert lenn and I'm Joe McCormick. And boy,
we've got a couple of episodes this week that I
am really excited about. Yeah, that's right. We're you know,
we're celebrating the Chinese New Year, the coming of the

(00:26):
Metal Locks, and so you know, on on this show
we enjoy some explorations of celebrations and explorations of mythology,
legend in folklore. We love a good monster, and around
this time of year, we especially like to explore topics
related to the Chinese cultures. So in this episode, we're
going to open up an ancient Chinese text known is

(00:47):
the shan Hai Jing, the Classic of Mountains and seas As.
It sometimes translated um. Other times it's translated as guideways
through mountains or seas. I've also seen it called the
Cannon of the Mountains and see ease. Yeah, and so
it's you know, different different translators. Translations are going to
be uh something we're going to touch on a lot
in this episode. But basically the plan is we're going

(01:09):
to talk about what this book is, with a few
examples from it in this episode, and then the next
episode will mostly just be strange creatures and monsters. It's
gonna be so much fun. Okay. So the Shanhaijing could
be thought of in a in a few different ways.
I mean, we can get more into this as we
go on, but in in some ways, it is a
text that is difficult to categorize, though some people have

(01:33):
sort of uh, some people have characterized it as an
ancient travel guide of sorts. It's like, you know, you
go buy that book in the gas station that tells
you about all the cool stuff in Delaware. This is
like that, but it's like all the cool regions and
monsters surrounding the ancient civilized regions of China. So you
could also look at it as a work of mythic geography,

(01:56):
a kind of magical geographical encyclopedia that says, hey, here
are the parts of the world, and here are all
the different kinds of flora and fauna and monsters and
gods and magical entities you will find in these parts
of the world. But one of the major focuses of
this book is something that you know, you know, us.
You know what kinds of things draw our attention. Uh,

(02:17):
it's going to be the guy Wou, which this author
named Richard Strasburg translates as strange creatures. Now we're gonna
be referring to a couple of books throughout these episodes.
So I guess the first one, just since I'm already
mentioning his name. Uh. This is a book called a
Chinese best Jerry Strange Creatures from the Guide Ways through
Mountains and Seas. And this is a translation and notes

(02:40):
by Richard Strasburg, who is a professor of of Chinese.
I think at U C. L A. So to give
some context for what these strange creatures the guai Wu
represented to ancient Chinese readers of this text, I wanted
to start with an example that that Strasburg also uses
right at the top of his introduction. Uh. So this

(03:01):
is a story from an ancient Chinese text known as
the Guanzi. Also that translates usually to Master Guan which
is a sort of compendium of tales and knowledge for
political leaders. It's it's state craft. It was composed and
collected probably between the fifth and the first century b C.
But it is attributed to this guy who lived farther

(03:25):
back in the seventh century b C. S traditionally said
to have been his sort of thoughts and writings, and
that is the titular master Guan or guang zong uh.
So back in the seventh century b C. There was
a ruler in the eastern Chinese state of Qi known
as Chi Huangong or do Quan of Chi, who lives

(03:46):
six eight five to six forty three, and the story
goes like this. One day, the Duke was out riding
past the safety of the city walls, and he's accompanied
by his prime minister or chancellor guan Jong, who again
this is traditionally said to be the author of this text. Now,
of course, when you venture out past the city walls,
there they are all these dangers that lie in wait.

(04:08):
You know, the untamed wilderness is out there. It sort
of represents chaos in some form, and it could reach
out and claim you. So, while Duke Juan and guan
Jong are riding along, they suddenly spot a tiger lying
in wait. It's sitting there ready to ambush, and the
predator locks onto the duke and his horse. And there's
every sign that the tiger is about to attack him,

(04:31):
but then at the last minute, the tiger seems to
think better of it, and then does not spring from
its ambush, and instead it refrains. It SLINKs away, and
the duke is perplexed what made the tiger shy away
from him? And guan Jong has an answer to this.
He says it must be because the Duke's horse bears
a strong resemblance to a strange creature known as the bow. Now,

(04:56):
a bow is in some ways like a western unicorn.
If you've ever in it in illustration, you might have
just mistaken it for that Western unicorn tradition. It is
a horse that has a horn on its head, but
it is more than that. And just to give you
a flavor of the raw text itself of the of
the shan Haijing, I want to quote from Strasbourg's translation

(05:17):
of the entry in this text about the bow. So
it goes like this. Three hundred lee farther west stands
Mount Winding Center. There is much jade on its southern slope,
and much realgar white jade and metal on its northern slope.
There is a beast dwelling here whose form resembles a horse,

(05:38):
but with a white body, black tail, a single horn,
and tiger's teeth and claws. It makes a sound like
a drum and is called the bow. The bow devours
tigers and leopards. It can also protect against weapons. There
is a tree growing here that resembles a wild plum,
but with round leaves and red fruit that is as

(06:00):
large as a papaya. It is called the Hawaii tree,
and eating of it will increase one's strength. And then
after this, after telling the story about Duke Kuan, Strasburg
says that this story kind of illustrates the importance of
understanding of strange creatures for powerful and learned people in
ancient China. And so, to quote from his introduction here,

(06:23):
Strasburg writes, Duke Huan, who has become legendary as the
first of the five great hegemons of the Joe dynasty,
is shown displaying his control over the wild periphery. The
tiger not only represents a threat demand still feared in
many areas of China at that time, but symbolically other
nobles who occasionally challenged the Duke's rule. The Duke's pre

(06:46):
eminence among men is matched by his horse's resemblance. To
one of the more fearsome strange creatures, and the Duke's
supremacy appears only momentarily threatened before he is cleverly reassured
by his prime minister. The original old readers of this
anecdote were mostly members of the literate elite with political
ambitions as officials or advisors in the courts of the

(07:07):
feudal states. They understood guan Jong's timely reply as an
example of his legendary success as an official, and read
the story as a recommendation that they too equip themselves
with such useful knowledge of the strange. And so this
is so interesting. I I love what is the kind
of picture of the culture that's inculcated by by this anecdote,

(07:31):
The idea that if you want to be a learned person,
a good advisor who has who can sort of adapt
to any situation, you don't just need to know how
politics works. You don't just need to know astronomy. You
don't just need to know the ways of divination and
and and the will of the gods and all that.
You also need to understand monsters. You need to understand

(07:54):
the strange beasts. You must have the best jerry within
your own mind. Yeah, this is this is really interesting
way to think about it. Right, the world is full
of these strange creatures, but there's there's there's an advantage
in in knowing about them and understanding their properties because
they are ultimately part of the world as well, because
in the various ways of looking at it and the

(08:16):
creatures that pop up in this book there they're not
They're not considered outsiders. They are part of the world,
and if you want to know the world, you need
to know it's denizens. Yeah, sometimes I get the impression
when reading about this that that it means something different
to be a strange creature in this ancient Chinese understanding
of the world, then it would mean to be like

(08:37):
a supernatural creature. Does that make sense? Yes? But then
but then a lot of the strange creatures, some of
the strange creatures are definitely supernatural, and their gods, even
or demi gods have have some sort of relationship with God's.
Others are just strange creatures like uh, well, like one

(08:57):
example that comes up if I can briefly just read
a quick passage from this translation by Anne Barrel that
I'll be referring to h again and again here, uh,
the text says, and this is again from the shaun Haijing.
There is a bird here which looks like a duck,
but it only has one wing and one eye. It

(09:18):
can only fly if it and another bird joined together.
Its name is the South Wild. Whenever it appears, there
will be severe floods overall under the sky. So, um,
a half duck. Yeah, so a half duck that comes
together with another half duck and becomes a thing that
can fly. Um, you know it. It doesn't sound like
this is a divine being. There is a certain amount

(09:40):
of magic to it. I guess in that it's something
it does can be an omen or you know, con
clue you in about what's happening in the world at large.
But that seems to be part of the the the
world view of the time anyway. So so yeah, it's
it's not like all of these are magical creatures versus
uh in traditional creatures, because there are a lot of

(10:01):
non magical There are a lot of we'll discuss more
about this in a bit, but you know, it's it's
not just filled with with creatures that do not exist.
There are also creatures within this book that are very
much real creatures. And to be clear, that mixing of
the mythical realm with the utterly mundane natural realm uh
that appears in other types of bestiaries from from other

(10:23):
parts of the world too. Yeah, probably the I mean,
the main thing we're talking about when we're talking about
best areas are of course, medieval bestI areas of Europe. Uh.
There were These were among the most popular illuminated texts
in like northern Europe at the time. They were compendiums
of beasts real and imagined that were generally described in
terms of their religious meanings. Um. There's a second century

(10:45):
CE text called the Physiologists, and this is the earliest
known example of this sort of text, and it was
based on information compiled from other sources such as Aristotle's
History of Animals, Uh, the work of Herodotus and of Horse.
Another key text that we've referenced again and again on
this show that imagine a number of you are already
thinking about as a parallel to the to the shan Hajing,

(11:08):
and that is, of course plenty of the Elder's natural history, right,
his natural history, of course, Plenty of the Elder was
a Roman military officer, politician, and author who lived in
the first century CE, and his natural history is a
great window into what was thought to be known about
the world during that time in ancient Rome. Yeah, a

(11:30):
ten volume attempt to compile all ancient knowledge concerning a
multitude of subjects then included no shortage of magic and monsters. Now,
Strasburg makes some comments in his introduction that I thought
were interesting, which is that while the Shanhaijing has some
similarities to these Western ancient and medieval best jeries, it

(11:51):
is very different in that it does not do allegorical
moralizing the way especially medieval best jeries in Christian Europe
did um so I guess to clarify on that, Like
a lot of times, if you read one of these
medieval best charity's, it would be like, here's a monster,
here's the cockatrice, or here's the unicorn, here's the basilisk
and uh, and then that becomes sort of a metaphor

(12:13):
for something about like sin or redemption. You know, it
has special meaning within like Christian theology. For the authors
of the Shannaijing, I think it seems clear that this
would be more akin to something like what Plenty was doing.
It was about just the literal preservation and transmission of
what was believed to be real knowledge about the world. Yes. Now,

(12:33):
not to say that some of these various creatures end
up taking on additional meaning later on and are used
to push various points. But yeah, for the most part,
this is an idea of this, this is the world.
Let us try and chronicle what is going on in
the world, both the Chinese world and the world outside
the limits of Chinese culture. So the shan Haijing consists

(12:54):
of eighteen books uh that attempt to chronicle the world,
and it has it has no no own author, though
it was long attributed to the mythic ruler You the Great.
This is the individual who is said to have quelled
the Great Flood of China during the twenty one century BC. Now,
another interesting thing about the shaan Haijing, brought up by

(13:16):
both key sources for this episode, is that it has
a long resisted easy classification. Now, not to the extent
of say the van Eche manuscript, which you know, it
seems like it's perhaps a nonsense text, right, we we
can't apply any understanding to it, uh, we just have
theories about what it possibly could be. Um. So it's
not on that level, but it is to the extent

(13:37):
that different commentators across the centuries have looked to it
as different things and for different answers. So the shaan
Haijing has been seen as a book of ancient wisdom,
a book of omens, a book of geography, a book
of cosmology, a book of fiction, a book of mythology,
a book of traditional medicine, and and more. So this
is one of the reasons that the text to survive

(13:59):
so long while others have been lost to history as
a long you know tradition of writers, first in China
and eventually beyond, continued to come back to it time
and time again, and thus a text with origins dating
back to as you know, as far as the fourth
century b c. Remains a popular text to this day
and has been translated into numerous languages numerous times, uh,

(14:20):
you know, and survived purges as well, you know, like like, oh,
you're throwing out cosmology books, Well, this is a book
of fiction, etcetera. And while we don't want to limit
the Shawnajing to just monsters, we did put monsters in
the title of the episodes because you know what we
like and we know what you like, So we thought
it was a good way to the ground it um,
you know, we wanted to catch your eye. But it
is filled with a lot of strange creatures, and and

(14:40):
not just creatures that are strange to modern Western readers,
but creatures that were strange to Chinese readers throughout the
book's history as well. Uh. Though, as the first commentator
of the book, go Po wrote, quote, A thing is
not strange in itself. It depends on me to make
it strange that uh, and that's that's a of that

(15:00):
Strasburg uses at the opening of his book. Uh. So
we just had to mention it here because I love
it in context here disgusting uh, this book, But it's
also just a great quote in general. Well, I feel
like in many ways that's sort of one of the
the underlying morals of themes of of at least what
we try to do on this show, I guess to
expand the broader quote from Gopu, he says that, you know,

(15:24):
people call something strange and they don't know why they
call them that. They call something's familiar, yet they know
not why either, What is the reason behind this? A
thing is not strange in itself. It depends on me
to make it strange. It is from me that this
strangeness results. It is not that the thing is fundamentally strange.
It makes me think about how often we just try

(15:45):
to remind you how strange something that you think is
normal is if you really think about it, right. Yeah,
And then the reverse is a useful exercise at times
as well. The thing that is strange, that is it
therefore intimidating or terrifying to you? Um, if you you
you turn it around, sometimes it's easier to to comprehend it. Now.
One theme that I was finding interesting when reading about

(16:08):
this book is its relationship to time and history in
the past. Um. One comment that that Strasburg makes is
that by like six b C, the year six b C,
the book was already regarded as a compendium of lost knowledge.
So it was already the kind of thing that people
were looking at and saying, Okay, this might not actually

(16:30):
be a perfect description of what's going on, of of
what the world is like today. It's this encyclopedia of
a bygone era. And this reminds me of something that
I don't know. It's it's an interesting way of viewing
the world that I think is common to children, but
it was at least true about me when I was
a child, which was uh, when I was a kid,

(16:53):
I would watch like fantasy, you know, movies and TV
and read books like that that wizard and dragons and stuff.
And I think, for a while, I believe that wizards
and dragons don't exist today, but they used to exist
in the past, like my just the distinction was not like,

(17:13):
you know, uh, mundane is real, magical is not real.
Instead it was like mundane is now magical was past interesting? Well,
on one hand, I envy you for for having ever,
uh you know, gotten to believe that dragons were real.
But but at least I wondered, you know, it seemed
like it seemed like, okay, that maybe that's a plausible
view of how things were. Yeah, but I mean it

(17:35):
makes it makes sense because that's I mean, fantasy often is,
especially modern fantasy, is the the extra. It's like sci
fi and reverse. It's the exercise of engaging with an
imagine past that tells us something about the present. But
I think it's interesting. Sometimes people would navigate this difference
by saying, okay, a an encyclopedic work that has lots
of monsters and strange creatures in it. It's not so

(17:58):
much that this is unreal and mythical and magical. Instead,
it's like a reference to some lost previous time and place. Yeah, yeah,
like the time when these creatures roamed. Uh. And of
course that's sort of a view of time. You did
to see that reflected in a lot of different traditions
and cultures, you know, like there was a time when

(18:20):
there were giants, there was a time when there were
dragons or unnatural beings walked the earth because of some cataclysm. Well,
and I think it's interesting that it seems like people
were making this distinction even in the ancient world, in
the Bronze Age, people would have this idea that like, oh,
there was a wilder, more magical time in the I
don't know what, you know, the the Antediluvian time, like

(18:42):
before the flood, there were more of these, uh, these
magical creatures roaming around now. And I can't remember offhand
if it was Barrel or if it was Strasburg who
points this out, but some, at least some of the
creatures described in the in the in the book in
the shaun Haijing could be creatures that went extinct. So
you know, not to say that's the case with say

(19:02):
that that the half a duck that comes together the
other duck, but various other creatures that maybe don't seem
to match up with things that live today. It could
be something that was say hunted to extinction, that sort
of thing, not not like a stegasaurus, but you know,
something more reasonable. Uh, you know it could be the case, right, No, oh,
I see you're not saying like it's a theory that
dinosaurs survived into the recent past, but just like you know,

(19:25):
normal fauna. Maybe there was like a deer with a
different kind of horn or something like that that yeah,
that's being yeah, being interpreted as a mythical creature today.
But it was just another large mammal, right, or some
of the more mundane animals that are mentioned in there
as well. Um, so so let's go ahead have a
proper note about the sources here. So we've already touched

(19:45):
on a Chinese bestiary Strange Creatures from the Guide Way
through Mountains and Seas, translated and with notes by Richard Strassburg.
Uh you see, l a uh, this is a really
really beautiful book. Ye it has more illustrations than some
of the other texts you'll find out there, and the
illustrations are are really part of the fun of these,

(20:06):
uh of this text. Now, I think we were talking
about this before we started recording. The illustrations in the
Strasburg version are wonderful, but I think they're they do
not date back as far as the text does. They're
more like a few hundred years old. They came from
some more recent edition of this text. There may have
been illustrations going as far back as the text does,

(20:29):
but we don't have those older illustrations anymore. Right, Yeah,
when we see this with other old books elsewhere, right,
like the illuminated version is old, but the text itself
that was transcribed in here and then illuminated he is older. Still.
You can also compare it to things like the sword.
The blade itself is much older, the sword handle, the

(20:49):
hilt is newer um. And that's pretty much what the
illustrations are here. But there was another book that was
a full translation of of the classic that you were reading, right, Yes,
I was reading The Classic of Mountains and Seas translation
and Notes by Ann burrel H, an author of numerous
books on Chinese Mythology. She taught Chinese and Chinese literature
at Cambridge University in the City, University of New York.

(21:12):
And this is a book from I've referred to Burrel's
work before. She she has a book just titled Chinese
Mythology that I that I have and in Strasburg references
Burrel's translation of the shan Haijing as being a good
one and cites her in his book, though he notes
a quote highly imaginative rendition of the names and places

(21:34):
and things, the names of places and things. Uh. We'll
touch on this later. But both of these texts are
available at reasonable prices in hard or soft back. I
don't think either one can be purchased as a as
a digital book at this moment, but these books are
out there and they can be obtained, so if you're
interested after this episode, I highly recommend checking these out.

(22:01):
All Right, So let's talk a bit more about the
book and where it came from, and just I guess
starting by talking about the world that it describes. So
the first way to look at the book is to
look at it as a textual model or a map
of the world as envisioned in ancient China, and this
largely conforms to the umbrella heaven model, Strasbourg tells us,

(22:23):
in which quote, heaven is like a rounded cover or
canopy supported at key points by sacred mountains above a flat,
square shaped earth. And then this square earth is encompassed
by four seas. So when you know the idea that's
the classic of the mountains and the seas, that's what
we're talking about here, and the seas are like the
limits of the world and lands beyond those seas or

(22:47):
you know, far flung distant places. Uh. When you see
this represented sometimes it looks almost comically symmetrical, like it
doesn't look like a real map of the world. Um.
But I mean when you think about it, I think
if you had not actually been able to explore all
of the borders around you, seems like a perfectly reasonable
thing to imagine that a map of the world would

(23:09):
be symmetrical, because I don't know, there are symmetries caused
just by the fact of like the curvature of the
earth that like if you look out in a flat
area in both directions, it seems to fall off at
the same place. Uh, that kind of thing. Yeah, So
Strasburg writes that quote. In the distant past, the concept
of seas may have been more metaphorical, referring to anybody
of water or even a land mass that lay beyond

(23:31):
the limits of the home territory. As the local Chinese
ethnic culture has expanded and had more direct contact with
the oceans to the northeast, east, and south, the term
seas took on more concrete meaning, while the magical concept
of four remained more symbolic than real, especially with regard
to the quote western sea. So the Western Sea might

(23:53):
have been more like you know, the the expanse of
land reaching out towards central Central Asia and Europe and
in India. Yes, exactly. Now. In terms of comparing the
Shawn Haijen two books that more that listeners are more
familiar with in the Western world, another one we might
compare it to is the Bible, because like the Bible,

(24:14):
we have different authors and different works from different periods
of time coming together in a single collection. Yes, as
a as a big appreciator of the Bible, this is
actually like maybe the one note I would give somebody
to better understand the Bible. I think the single biggest
problem modern people have with understanding and interpreting the Bible

(24:35):
is failing to recognize it as a collection of books
written by different authors across hundreds of years, working their
own distinct perspectives. I think so much modern confusion about
the Bible arises from the tortured logic of trying to
interpret it as like as if it were a single
book by a single author representing one unified message. Yeah,

(24:58):
you can really get stylist whiplash two going from one
top of the Bible to another. Yeah. So yeah, I
mean that's you know, a former former show guest Bart
Rman who came on to talk about the origins of
the concepts of heaven and hell um. He talked, he
talks about this a good bit too, that like you've
got to let each of the books of the Bible
be its own work and like understand what it's individual

(25:20):
author was trying to do with it. Yeah. But now
I would say the Shannhai Jing is somewhat different though,
because it's not like, hey, here's one book that has
a distinct author and then it's always identified. This is
more like a collection of things that don't always identify
them as coming from a different author, right, Yeah, I mean,

(25:41):
and and in general, we just have the authorship is
an is anonymous because we don't really know who wrote
any of these pieces. Yeah, is a barrel points out
it's it comprises quote several texts of varying chronology and authorship,
And the most obvious textual divide occurs between books five
and six, because books one through five are often known

(26:03):
collectively as the Five Treasures, the Classic of Mountains. So
for starters, just to talk about, you know, the Five
Treasures here these five books concern in glowing terms, the
square earth of the Chinese realm um, the the the
Chinese world, you know that is, you know, surrounded by
the seas. When we venture into books six through eighteen,

(26:26):
we venture into the increasingly barbaric and strange lands beyond
the borders of China. So that's one way to look
at these books, with the first five chapters representing the
known Chinese world and the other books looking beyond its
borders to stranger lands. And now this is interesting to
Beryl also classifies these first five books as being more

(26:46):
of a proto scientific document by someone who was seemingly
a traveler naturalist who acquired information about the regions of
China firsthand. Most of the details relate to botanical and
zoological information, but there's also some geology and medicine, particularly
concerning the medicinal use of the various planted animals that

(27:06):
are explored. Uh then the animals mentioned again, they range
from um, you know something that that clearly is an
actual animal and was extant at the time, to potentially
extinct and just outright mythical and magical beings. Just to
give an example of this that I'm going to read
once more from from Barrel, and this is from the

(27:27):
first five books. The river View contains numerous patterned flying
fish that look like carp They have a fish's body
but a bird's wings. They have bright blue markings and
a white head with a scarlet mouth. These flying fish
often travel to the West Sea and Sport in the
East Sea. They travel by night. They make a noise

(27:48):
like a wonderbird chicken. They have a sweet and sour taste.
If you eat some, it will cure madness. Whenever it appears,
there will be bumper harvests all over under the sky.
Now we see several things here that are repeated in
lots of the animal or monster entries within the shann
Haijing because you'll often get like a place where this

(28:10):
is found a physical description. It makes a sound like
x if you can be used to cure why ailment
and is an omen for z right, you know, so
there's like a standard format to these. Yea, not all
of them follow, but that's a really common, recurring kind
of structure. Yeah. So so this is what Barrel has

(28:33):
to say about this quote. It has to be said
that the discussion of botany and zoology in the first
five books is not conducted according to taxonomic principles, and
it is often based on mythological inspiration or misguided errors
of identification, which diminished scientific accuracy. On the other hand,
given the lack of development in classical science in the
ancient world generally, the attention to botanic and zoological detail

(28:55):
in the classic is quite remarkable and serves as evidence
for a foundation. However, rudimentary of the scientific method in
ancient China. Absolutely, I mean one of the first and
most important steps in studying the natural world is making
a catalog of things. You have to like survey what's
in the world right down it's characteristics so that other

(29:17):
people can read it identify the same thing and then
talk about it and compare their notes. Right, so, even
though it ends up including things that they clearly never existed,
like the half ducks. Um, you know, like the template
is sound, you know, if you're gonna attempt to catalog
everything like that's these are some good points to consider.
I'm shocked at your closed mindedness. You don't think there

(29:38):
was ever a half duck? Well, you know, who knows?
Who knows? Um, especially when we get into some of
the translation issues. Will discuss in a bit um. So anyway,
there are editorial interventions in these first five books, but
then books six through eighteen lean increasingly towards the mythic
and the fantastic. Also, in dealing with foreign people's we

(30:00):
the same sorts of xenophobic myth making that all ancient
cultures engaged in foreign people's are discussed in terms of
barbarism and beastliness, though, as Barrel points out, quote inhabitants
who wear a cap and belt are given mild approval. Yeah,
there are all kinds of things that are I guess
you would say that there's somewhere between ethnographies of neighboring

(30:23):
you know, groups of people, and discussions of beasts, because
there will be like entries about people who have I
don't know, faces in their torsos or something. This is
obviously not real people, but they're treated as if they're
like a tribe of humans, right, And of course this
corresponds directly with things we see in plenty right yea um.

(30:44):
But anyway, there's there is a you know, a sense
of cultural superiority and discussing um Chinese culture and other
people's from other realms beyond the boundaries of the ancient
Chinese world. And it's also reflected in the sort of
names given to foreign creatures and even foreign places. There's
a strong sense of the inner Chinese world as a
sacred environment and the lands outside is profane or even cursed.

(31:06):
Given such names as these are translated, of course by
Beryl black Tooth. And I love this one, the land
of Ghoul and the name okay oh. I was just
gonna say, I like the people who have weird ears,
like they're people with like long ears, and then the
people with pendant ears, and then the people with there
are other kind of ears I think too loppy ears.

(31:28):
Is one hound armor um, which I'm not sure exactly
what that would mean, but um, you know this, this
it gives you something to go on, like those words.
And this is all an example of what Strasburg is
talking about regarding Beryl's use of names. It reminds me
a lot of something we talked about recently on the show, Uh,

(31:48):
the names of demons and Dante's Infernos and uh and
translations of Inferno, all the demons of the Mala Bronca group,
the evil clause. I mean, Mala Bronca sounds a lot
cooler than evil clause, but that is what it translates to.
But I'd rather just call him Mala Bronca. Yeah, Like
like who do you want to read about? Scarmiglion or
troublemaker Malacoda or evil tale? Um? You know, did the

(32:12):
non Italian speaker either choice misses something right? I think
one of them is translates to something like bad pig
or something or something mean pig. Yeah. I mean it's tough,
right because on one hand, like the the the more
literal translation like evil tale, evil pig, troublemaker, etcetera, it
gives you a little more to go on, like concrete description,

(32:34):
you know, uh, and you can you can begin to
form an image of that awful demon in your mind.
But then the the Italian uh you know, often has this.
It works like this, like the name itself. It has
a certain sound, it has a certain energy to it
that is not going to necessarily survive translation. And of

(32:55):
course it's it has it has a foreign air to it.
It feels exotic. Oh, this reminds me. A few years
ago we did an episode on a concept known as idiophones,
which is the the the suggestion that there are certain
types of sounds that two people seem to convey particular
meanings despite having no uh, despite having you know, no

(33:17):
no linguistic relationship and a dictionary definition, since the fact
that like in any language, apparently like hard k sounds
are naturally associated with like sharp corners and abrasiveness and
stuff like that. And I think some of that really
comes through in Dante's names for for the demons of
the Malibranca troupe. But also there's another layer there, which

(33:38):
is that I think it's hypothesized by some scholars that
Dante was literally trying to create the names of these
demons to sound kind of similar to names of people
from Tuscany that he didn't like. Well that that sounds
perfectly reasonable. Yeah, that's that's that's Dante to a t Alright,
So yes, all these things concerning the translation of demon

(33:59):
name hims in the Inferno, I feel like they're all
they're all present here as well dealing with this translation.
But that's just Italian into English. It's even more complicated
when you're translating ancient Mandarin into modern English. So Strasburg
stresses that the Chinese graphs possess one or more meanings.
So names in the Classic might be rather comprehensible, they

(34:22):
might be ambiguous or convey multiple meanings, or they might
be names that quote cannot be understood with any certainty,
even if the graphs may function semantically in other contexts. Okay,
what does that mean? Okay? So, for instance, there's a
creature that that pops up in book fourteen that is
described as a beast. That quote looks like an ox

(34:43):
with a bright blue body, but it has no horns
and only one foot. When it comes out of the
water and goes back in, there are there's there are all.
There's always wind and rain, and the glare from it
is like that from the sun and the moon. The
animal makes a sound like thunder. And its name is
and then it depends on what translation you're reading. So

(35:05):
Barrel translates its name as awe struck. I am awe
struck by that's glare like the sun in the moon,
and it's one ft. Strasburg merely writes, he is called
ka um. The kui is to use our alphabet. Uh
So there you see the divide the divide here. Now again,

(35:25):
I kind of feel like I like both because, uh,
you know, the the the more Mandarin name like it.
It has all of that. It feels um, it feels exotic,
it it has this kind of magical energy to it.
But then awe struck also gives me something to go on. Um,
So I can see the argument made in from from
from either translation, it's also described as a as a

(35:48):
thunder beast, and and just to give a little more
detail about it, because it has a fun little story
with it, the great God Yellow which it may also
be translated as the Yellow the Arc, but more commonly
known as the Low Emperor. I feel like that's how
I see this. Uh. This character described most of the
time Huangdi, and it basically what the the Yellow Emperor does.

(36:09):
He sees his creature. It's it's powerful, it has all
this energy. So he kills it, and he makes its
skin into a drum and he uses one of its
bones to beat the drum. Uh. And it is, as
you might imagine, quite loud. And so this instrument becomes
crucial in his battle against chi Yo, the legendary creator
of metal working and weapons. Well, that seems very fitting

(36:29):
because again, as we've said, a lot of the entries
in the shann Haijing don't just tell you what a
creature is and where it is, but they often tell you,
like what what you can do with it, Like it
will protect against weapons, or it is a medicine that
will prevent swelling. Yeah, and if you happen to be
a god, there are additional things you can do with it. Apparently.

(36:50):
Um Now, Like like most mythical creatures, there are a
lot of variations with the quay. Here in yang and
and Turner's Chinese Mythology and another book that I have here,
they point out that Confucius use the quay in order
to teach the concept of one is enough regarding the
staffing of key talented officials, because again, this is in
essence a one legged ox um. So I found that

(37:13):
pretty interesting. Um well, I like that. How even if
in the original text these monsters are not usually presented
as something that's supposed to have an allegorical meaning, it's
just like, hey, here's a monster, here's what it where
it is, what it does? Uh that that interpreters will
give it an allegorical meaning, right, Yeah, So that's something
to keep in mind with all of these with it,

(37:33):
as is always the case, once a mythological creature is
introduced or reintroduced stephen um, others may may take it
and change it and adapt it and use it for
other purposes. Now, Barrell notes that regarding translations, in some
ways the Shaan Hajing is less challenging than other archaic
text but that the quote nature of the textual problems

(37:57):
of the classic resides in the great number of for
which the text is the locust classicus, and for which
no safe and satisfactory glosses have yet been offered. So
if you remember back to our episode on the Chinese typewriter,
you might recall these facts about managing characters. So, first
of all, the overall Chinese lexicon numbers in the tens

(38:18):
of thousands, forty seven thousand, uh, you'll find in one
of the key dictionaries, and it's been it's been summarized
that in order to get the basic gist of a
Chinese newspaper today, you would need to know between twelve
hundred and fifteen hundred characters uh to UH. To really
sufficiently understand what you're reading, you'd need to know between

(38:39):
two thousand and three thousand. Meanwhile, a well educated Chinese
speaker in today's world likely knows six thousand to eight
thousand characters. So that's like less than twenty percent of
the of the total vocabulary. Yeah. So, so what Barrel
is saying here regarding the shawn Haijing is that there
are some characters or graphs in it that are the
best known or the primary example of usage, you know,

(39:02):
like you don't find them anywhere else, or this is
the main place you find them. So it might be
the name of a place or a creature, and there's
not much in the way of additional context. Okay, so
it's just like here, here's the thing, and we don't
really have any other reference points going back any further
for it. Right, so Beryl sums up her translation choices
being one that avoids transliteration and immediately brings the classic

(39:24):
to life, you know, again getting that idea of like awestruck,
that will give you some idea of what this one
legged ox is doing. Um, there's some three thousand place names,
she writes in the text easily becomes overcrowded otherwise, and
she goes into a lot more detail about this, essentially
laying out her entire philosophy on translating this challenging text.
But anyway back to the format here. While there there

(39:46):
is a concise formulaic style in the first five books
that can seemingly be attributed to a potential still unknown
single author books six through eighteen or a different matter,
Beryl writes that that the text becomes dis jointed, repetitive, minimalist,
even uh like quote hurried, even careless travel notes. And

(40:08):
there are different theories as to why. Some commentators have
proposed that these were collected originally on bamboo slips and
they became displaced at some point and resulting in disorder.
Others have pointed more to editorial editions and even censorship,
and Barrel describes these books as a you know, a
makeshift text made up of different reports from different travelers
put together with no attempt at literary form. But that

(40:31):
doesn't mean the books six through eighteen are less interesting
or anything. Barrel writes that that quote, they contain such
valuable and unrivaled data on anthropology and ethnology, genealogy, ecology,
and mythology that their content more than makes up for
the deficiencies of style. I'll say, I can't wait to
read more passages from this book in part two. Yeah, yeah,

(40:54):
there's there's so much wild and wonderful stuff in there,
um so. But but it's one of these things, like
I think, when I first started looking into this, I thought, oh,
here's a here's a book from which we can just
draw some interesting creatures highlight. And then the more I
looked at it, I realized that the book itself, like
the story of the book on the form of the book,
was just so fascinating and ultimately makes us think about

(41:15):
like books in general, and books and other that comes
from other cultures. You know, ancient books, holy books, you
know how they're built and how we think about them. Right, Well,
one thing that it definitely has in common with many
other ancient works, and that that that I think is
always very interesting is that it's the work of many hands.
You know, this is obviously there were different authors at

(41:35):
different times adding to this collection, and there are different
sensibilities going into the entries within this this travel guide
or encyclopedia or mythic geography, whatever you want to call it.
But it has through much of history been ascribed to
a single author. Said, yeah, you the Great wrote this.
It was one guy, And so you're imagining a single

(41:58):
brain from lad gend that poured forth this thing that
is quite clearly in reality an amalgam. Yeah, of course,
you know, if You the Great had written it, if
that were true, that would mean the book would be
like four thousand years old. Um. But in reality, the
first five books, the Five Treasures, uh, they probably date
from the third century BC, and most modern scholars date

(42:20):
everything in the book from the period between the early
third century BC and the earliest centuries C. Again written
by a number of authors over the course of centuries,
though perhaps books one through five were written by the
same individual. Thank thank now we've mentioned him already because

(42:43):
he's the source of that great uh quote about how
it is me that makes something strange. But the the
author of this quote was was Go Po, who lived
to seventy six to three twenty four, who was a
scholar and poet and a really important commentator on the
classic of the mountains and seas through history. A little
background on Go Po. My main source here is an

(43:06):
introduction to Chinese poetry from the Canon of Poetry to
the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty by Michael Fuller, published
by brill In So. Go Pho lived under the chaotic
end of the Western Jin dynasty, which fell apart due
to all kinds of simultaneous crises around the year three sixteen.
I think there was some kind of succession dispute for

(43:29):
the leadership that turned into violent chaos, and uh, all
kinds of things went wrong. But then eventually power was
reconsolidated under what's known as the Eastern Jin. I think
like the year after that, and Go Pu served out
under the Eastern Gin. Now, according to Fuller, Go Pu
was the pre eminent writer of the early Eastern Jin,

(43:51):
and this would of course include poetry. He was a poet,
and I'm going to read one of his poems in
a minute. But he was also an immensely learned scholar,
having had the benefit of access to the Imperial Library
since he was young due to the fact that his
father was also a member of the Gin Court. In
addition to writing a commentary on the on the Shanhaijing,

(44:12):
he also wrote commentaries on other works such as the
Lyrics of Chew and he annotated the earliest surviving Chinese
dictionary the area. But unfortunately, Go Pu met a horrible
end due to one of his his particular skills. To
quote here from Fuller, he was also adept at divination,
but this talent led to his violent death. When the

(44:34):
military commander Wang Dunn was planning a rebellion, Go Pu,
at the time was serving as his adjutant. Wang sawt
the divination about whether he would succeed, and Go's answer
was surely not. Wang had him killed. It's a dangerous,
a dangerous business, uh reading, reading omens and and telling

(44:56):
the future to military leaders, or just in general, delivering
bad news to bad tempered leaders. And some guys just
don't want to hear bad news. But as for his poetry,
I got sidetracked for a bit looking at his poetry,
which I thought was interesting. Much of it apparently doesn't
survive to the present. But of what does survive. Fourteen

(45:16):
of the surviving poems are part of a series he
wrote called Poems on Wandering Immortals and Fuller Rights Quote.
In these, Gopu develops a persona that scorns the trappings
of success and instead yearns for the simple life of reclusion.
The language of the poems, in contrast to their themes,
shows strong traces of gin Courtly rhetorical embellishment and area edition.

(45:42):
Which is funny because in reading about that, and in
actually reading the poems themselves, I felt some resonance with
another theme that has come up several times on the
show recently, which is pastoral poetry. But I just want
to read a bit here from the first of the
poems on Wondering Immortals by Gopu writes, the capital is
a layer of wandering nights. Mountain forests provide a roost

(46:06):
for the recluse. How is a vermilion gate worth glorifying?
It is not so good as lodging at ping Lie?
And ping Lie was one of the aisles of the
immortals in the Eastern Ocean. With the poem goes on
standing by the spring head, I decant its pure waves
on ridges and knolls, I gather cinnabar sprouts at mystic ravine,

(46:28):
one can dwell in hiding. Why strive to ascend the
cloud ladder? And that last line there really struck me
because I was like, what is a cloud ladder? I
looked it up and a cloud ladder was a was
a an ancient Chinese siege weapon that was like a folding,
hinged ladder that was used to breach city walls. Now

(46:51):
I think it's being used metaphorically here, a metaphor for
the you know, the sort of like constant struggle of
trying to ascend through the ranks of city life and
be acratic life in the court. Yeah, yeah, it's it
seems kind of fitting to right, this idea of the
ladder is the thing you're ascending as part of your
your life is the rat race. But of course, the
thing about us an actual siege ladder is once you

(47:13):
get to the top, uh, Like that's one of the
most dangerous parts, right, because now you're up there with
the other soldiers. Um, you know, in a way it
kind of you know, it it kind of forecasts his death,
you know, uh, you know, working your way up being
a part of the system being close to power um,
and then you know you're right up there at the top,
and that's when they get you. Right, You're about to

(47:35):
get a halberd through the guts. Yeah, but I thought
it was really interesting. I didn't plan it to come
out this way. But on a couple of episodes, Uh,
recently we've been talking about some of the ironies of
pastoral poetry, which is a tradition going back thousands of years.
We were talking about the pastoral poetry of virgil Um
and some pastoral poetry probably falsely attributed to Virgil and

(47:56):
then also in more recent years where what what a
lot of it seems to have in common is this
irony that it was poetry espousing the purity and the
goodness and and how nice and easy it would be
to be like a rural shepherd instead of somebody living
in a city. But it was always written by people
who only had lived in cities, had never been a

(48:17):
rural shepherd. Then like it probably didn't understand what kind
of work was involved in an agricultural existence, and uh
and so yeah, and this seems like the same thing.
I mean, not to not to disparage Gopu, who it
seems like he was a really interesting poet. But it
seems yet again, like this is somebody who his whole
life had lived, you know, the courtly life, and he's

(48:37):
idealizing the life of someone living alone in the wilderness,
which obviously would come with its own with its own
harshness and struggles. But I guess the grass is always greener,
or the cinnabar, the cinnabar sprouts are always greener when
you're trying to climb the cloud ladder. This this also
reminds me of something that Barrel brings up, pointing out
that one of the early early admirers of the Classic

(49:00):
was a fourth century nature poet by the name of
Tao Yuan Ming, who wrote an appreciative poem titled on
Reading the Classic of the Mountains of the Seas, And
basically it's the poem telling you the best way to
read this book, and it involves like setting out, going
out into nature, being in a garden that has been

(49:20):
freshened by a rain shower, being surrounded by good friends,
having some new wine. You know, there's a gentle breeze,
and then he says, quote, if this isn't happiness, then
I don't know what is, but there's kind of like
a pastoral longing um tied up with appreciation of the book,
which makes sense given that those first five chapters, the
Five Treasures are are in a large part just about

(49:43):
the beauty of the Chinese landscape and and and the
world of of of China. So I feel like those
two things go together, you know, rather snugly. Well, let's
say that's actually a very strong tradition throughout throughout different
ages of Chinese poets. One of the things that I
think is one of the most unifying characteristics of Chinese

(50:04):
poetry in particular is its tactle appreciation of the specific
surfaces and images of nature. There are tons of of
wonderful Chinese poems just about the you know, the feeling
of the water of the stream, and the and the
and the sun shining off of the leaves of the tree.

(50:25):
There's a lot of very very textural pleasure of the
natural world. The half ducks coming together and flying off.
So yeah. The earliest commentary on the shan Hajjing is
is that of Gopu, and in it he shares a
really cool story to illustrate how this older text found
new life, a story that was first mentioned in the

(50:47):
earliest preface to the shan Haijing by Lu Sen, who
lived fifty three BC through twenty three C. And in
this account, basically this is what happens. It's it's fifty
C and the Han Emperor visits a cave in northwest
China that has just been opened up, and here they
find the remains of a man with his hands bound

(51:08):
behind his back, bound with his own long hair, and
one of his feet is in fetters. And the emperor
is just fascinated by this. He's very curious Um, and
he asks his entourage for an explanation, but no one
has an answer except for the librarian Loui ci hung Uh.
He recognizes it and explains that there is a parallel

(51:30):
to this in in a book that he has in
the Classic of the Mountains and Seas, And it's the
myth of Perils and twain Loads ritual execution for the
murder of a lesser god beloved by a greater god Um.
Now this would be twain Load here or Erfu was
a god and ultimately a corpse deity Um who was

(51:51):
indeed ritually executed for the murder of notch flaw or
yah Yu, a polymorphic deity that eats humans, sometimes described
more in terms of a cannibal. And then twain Load
is then resurrected by Shamans after his death, thus his
status as a corpse deity. So anyway, the in in
this little account barrel rights, the Emperor was absolutely astounded

(52:14):
by this, and from that time on people were in
competition to study the classic. And so you know, this
begins a long tradition of studying the text, commenting on it,
and eventually translating it into other languages. Various views of
the text or favored throughout its history, and uh yeah,
it ends up you know still to this day, you know,

(52:34):
people are writing books about it, new translations are coming
out about it, and um uh it's and also you
see new works emerged in recent centuries as well. During
the eighteenth century, the Chinese writer Uh Leads you Chen,
who lived seventeen sixty three through eighteen thirty, wrote a
satirical novel that inverted the ridicule of the book. Instead

(52:55):
of facing outward towards non Chinese, it faced in at
the Chinese people, subverting the mythology to point out perceived
faults in the national character, which is an interesting satire
of his own culture exactly. Yeah, and it's titled The
Flowers in the Mirror and I checked you can you
can actually get you can get an English translation of this.

(53:16):
That sounds interesting. Now, both authors here go into a
lot more detail about about all of this about it's
it's you know, the intricate details and like major translations
and major commentators. But hopefully this brief history will suffice
for the podcast and help help provide a base from
which to enjoy the text. Uh. Yeah, we were already
going pretty long for part one, so we'll have to

(53:36):
call it there, I think, and come back with more
in part two. Yeah, part two, though, there's gonna be
strange creatures. Sometimes you can eat for magical powers, a
creature with just butts on both sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we'll talk about that critter for sure. So so yeah,
come back on Thursday and we will will dive deeper

(53:56):
into the Shawn Hai gene. In the meantime, you know,
we'd love to hear from everybody out there, especially if
you have expertise regarding a Mandarin or Chinese culture or
certainly this this particular book and its history. Uh, certainly
right in let us know. Uh. If you want to
listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
you can find the podcast feed wherever you get your

(54:17):
podcasts and wherever that happens to be. If they let you,
just rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
like to get in touch with us with feedback on
this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
the future, just to say hello, you can email us
at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(54:44):
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