Monsters of the Shān Hǎi Jīng, Part 2

In the previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discussed 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. In this episode, the continue by discussing some of the fantastic creatures mentioned in the text.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Sbot to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And today we're back with part two of our discussion
of the Shanhai Jing, the ancient Chinese work of mythic

(00:25):
geography that we introduced in the last episode. If you're
just coming in on this one, I really recommend you
go back and listen to the previous episode first, because
that will make sense of what we're talking about today. Yeah,
it's it's just really was really fun to dive into
the nature and history of this ancient Chinese text. Uh
not not only to learn about it and about the

(00:46):
you know, the Chinese culture to emerge from, but it
also I think exemplifies a lot of realities about texts
and about old texts and old books. Uh so well
worth listening to if you happen to skip it now.
The refreecap is that the Shanhaijing. This title is sometimes
translated as the Classic of Mountains and Seas or The

(01:07):
Cannon of Mountains and Seas. One of the authors who
did some translations and commentary that we talked about in
the last episode Richard Strasburg. I think he translates it
as Guideways through the mountains and seas. This is, in
some ways you could look at it as an ancient
travel book. It's a book of ancient mythic geography that
tells you about mountains and seas, seas, sometimes in a

(01:29):
metaphorical kind of sense, and not just meaning water, but
expanses of the world. Uh, and the animals and plants
and minerals you can find there, and often the gods
and monsters that you can find there. That's right. So
in this episode, we're just going to talk about some
of the various gods and monsters that pop up um,

(01:49):
some big ones, some small ones, some that turns out
they're not even perhaps even that fantastic at all, but
the description is kind of fantastic. Uh. So we're gonna
We're gonna start big though, with one of the I
think the more interesting looking creatures, at least as it's
often depicted in illustrations for this book, but also in
terms of just like how deeply weird it happens to be.

(02:12):
We're gonna be talking about hundun Um, which Anne Burrow
translates as muddle thick uh. But this uh, this is
a cree. I think we touched on this creature very
briefly in the last episode, right, Well, we were talking
about some of the illustrations that accompany the at least
the Strasbourg translation of these selections from the Shannhaijing. Now,

(02:35):
the illustrations that we have in in additions like Strassburg's,
they don't go back all the way. These are not
illustrations that would have accompanied it in its earliest form.
They're more like a few hundred years old, but they're
still wonderful. But this one reference, actually the the entry
is under the name Dijng, and the dij Young contains
a reference to this this idea of Huondon, which will

(02:58):
explain more as we go on. But the dis Young
is sometimes depicted as having no face and no eyes,
and in these these classic woodblock illustrations, he's like a
six legged winged beast with butts on both ends. Well, um,
as we'll get into, I don't think they're butts, um,
I I would. I would describe it as also looking
a bit like an Ottoman, like a like a four

(03:20):
and I mean, I'm sorry, a six legged ottoman with wings. Um,
it's it's a strange looking creature. And so let me
go ahead and read from the Shanhaijing. This is Barrel's
translation quote. Three hundred and fifty leagues further west is
a mountain called Mount Sky. It has a great amount
of gold and jade and green male yellow. The river

(03:40):
Brave rises here and then flows southwest to empty into
Hot Water Valley. There is a god here who looks
like a yellow sack. He is scarlet like sinnabar fire.
He has six ft and four wings. He is muddle thick.
He has no face and no wies. He knows how
to sing and dance. He is in truth the great

(04:00):
God Long River. Now that is an excellent string of sentences.
Uh we. We got in the last episode into some
issues about difficulties in translating the the ancient Chinese graphs
that are used in this text and how to turn
them into modern concepts or or words in other languages. So,
for example, some differences here in Strasburg's translation. So the

(04:24):
mountain in Burrels is called Mount Sky, and Strasburg it's
the celestial mountain in Burrel green male yellow. For Strasburg
is green real gar, and Realgar is the name of
an arsenic sulfide mineral that forms these striking red crystals.
Burrel's River Brave is imminent river for Strasburg, I think

(04:45):
I like River Brave better um. But the biggest difference
is that where Burrel says he is muddle thick, he
has no face and no eyes, Strasburg translates, he exists
in a state of confusion with no face or I.
And in this we're getting into that term um undon,

(05:05):
which can be used in a couple of different ways. Um.
I believe it can be used as a as like
a noun and an adjective. This according to Yang and
in Turner in their book Chinese Mythology. So it can
be a descriptive term, or it can be the noun.
It can refer to chaos and primeval chaos, but it
also can refer to a person who is quote ignorant

(05:27):
and muddle headed. So easily you can see how this
complicates the translation process, and Strasburg writes about this that
that there are various lens of what he calls associative
reasoning and linguistic connections that have taken the Dijong and
made it in many commentaries not just a creature, not

(05:48):
just a critter of the mountains, but somehow the personification
of what he calls cosmogonic chaos. And this is the
idea of hun doon Uh. And he says that the
conclusion here is largely based on the line he exists
in a state of confusion, that word confusion being hundu
and h u n d un in the English, and
how that could be taken as the proper name hundon,

(06:11):
which is a chaos personification, a kind of confusion deity
that there are actual myths and fables about Yeah, like
for instance, um, even in modern Mandarin chaos theory is
known as undu and chia uh chaos theory math. So
the illustration that accompanies this is I think really quite

(06:32):
cute in many ways. I'm kind of reminded of a
triple you know, especially in its faithlessness and uh in
all now, um, what you said earlier Joe about about
this being looking like a winged and legged butt um
or a double butt even, um, you know you are
tempting the gods of chaos, I think by stating this,

(06:53):
And interestingly enough, uh if you were to say it
it looks like it has one butt or two butts,
you'd be complete you wrong as well, because the god's
lack of bodily orifices is stressed in parallel texts from
the fourth century b C. According to Beryl, yes so,
so if this were a creature with six legs and
four wings and a butt on each ends, the butts

(07:15):
on each end would have to be without anuses. They
would just be smooth, uh butts with no orifice at all. Now, um,
it's it's interesting that this is something to keep in mind.
If this lunar new Year, you haven't to have wantons.
Apparently Hundun has some connection, possibly some connection or faint
connection to the word for wanton. And indeed, if you

(07:37):
look at it, it does kind of look like a
wanton with wings and feet. Yeah, it's a cute, fluffy
little package. It can absolutely look like a dumpling of
some sort. Or to go back to the original passage
in the Shannhaijing, it is compared to a sack, and
in some ways a dumpling is like a sack for
food contents. Now, she mentions that the legs are are

(07:57):
often described as being reptile legs and has these yellow
and scarlet markings, and though eyeless and faceless, it is
also the originator of song and dance. Now, this this
really got me thinking because it made me it made
me think back to Corman McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Now, I'm
not aware that cormanccarthy ever drew uh any inspiration from

(08:20):
Chinese writings or myth, but but I am strongly reminded
of Judge Holden in all of this, the murderous scalp
hunter and gnostic ARCon in his West in that Western novel,
Because aside from Holden's deep connections with chaos and the
supernatural overtones to the characters, there's this fabulous bit from
the closing pages of the novel in which quote he

(08:41):
is dancing dancing, he says that he will never die.
And he's also described in the scene as seem particularly
as being naked and hairless, pale, quote like an enormous infant.
So I would propose that Judge Holden might well be
hound Well Huondon. While in uh some Manifestations is a
sort of from what I can tell, morally neutral, there

(09:03):
are evil hun Doon as well. Yeah, and I think
it's it's interesting that chaos would would have these sort
of different definitions and different um you know, tonal shifts,
because a lot of reality is concerning chaos. It did
does depend on on who's telling the story, who's thinking
about chaos. You know, I'm again reminded of that line

(09:24):
from a Connoisseur of Chaos by Wallace Stevens. A violent
order is a disorder, and a great disorder is an order,
and these two things are one you know. Um oh,
you're emphasizing that one man's order is another man's chaos,
Like yeah, pretty crashing treasure. Yeah, yeah, it kind of depends, uh,
depends his his commentating on it. So the most sighted
version of this myth comes from zong Zoo, and it's

(09:47):
a third century BC text that's traditionally attributed to this
uh Dallast philosopher. Um So, anyway, he tells the story
in which the chaos deity Hundon resides in a s
central region and it's this central region where two gods
from far flowing parts of the world come to meet.
And these two gods are fast and swift, and uh

(10:10):
you know that they felt they after a while they've
been meeting here. Um, you know, I guess like having
coffee and stuff. They felt they owed whom doing a
debt of gratitude. But how do you repay a being
who has none of the seven openings of the face? Right?
You can't sing to them because there are no ear holes. Uh,
you can't speak, nor can you speak a word of
thanks to them. You can't give them food or wine.

(10:30):
So these two gods did the only natural thing. They
decided to chisel holes into the chaos deity. So they
chiseled one hole per day for seven days, and then
on the seventh day, the god Hundom dies. Do you
mind if I just read the direct translation that Strasbourg
has of this, because I think the wording is very funny.

(10:53):
It's very brief. So his version is the the arch
of the Southern Sea was named Sudden, the the arch
of the North and Cy was named Hasty, and the
the arch of the center was named Hundun. Once Sudden
and Hasty together paid a visit to Hundun's domain and
were treated most courteously by him. They discussed among themselves
how to repay his generosity, saying, all men have seven

(11:15):
orifices to see here eat and breathe only he does not.
Why not drill them for him? Every day? They drilled
one hole, but after seven days Hundun died, so they
made it six days. They drilled six holes in his
head and he was still okay. But when they got
to the seventh hole, is just just too much. Now
you might be wondering what could this possibly mean? It

(11:37):
just sounds like like sheer madness, right, Um? Well, apparently
the message of the myth that Young tells is that
one must not inflict artificial order on the natural world.
So fast and swift here are agents of unnatural order
attempting to inflict their way of thinking, um in a
in a way that is, you know, ultimately disastrous, you know,

(12:00):
killing the entity in the process. Yeah, I got to
thinking about this. So Strasburg explains that pretty much in
the same way. He says that the traditional way the
story is interpreted within Taoism is that Undun is the
embodiment of primordial chaos quote, who is a victim of
purposeful activity, destroyed by the well intentioned, though dangerously misguided

(12:20):
efforts of humanizing civilization. The fable thus reflects the philosopher's
nostalgia for a golden age of primitive society, when all
life was believed to be an accord with the simple
patterns of the natural way other words, in other words
the Tao. So that seems to be the classic interpretation
that was presented in this ancient text. Uh. You know,

(12:41):
there used to be a time when humans were more
in accord with nature, and then there were the civilizing
impulses that that led us to, you know, create the
kind of complicated society we live in today, and that
sort of ruins everything and and kills this this uh
being of primordial simplicity. But I was thinking about another
way to interpret pretty much the same themes is that

(13:04):
it could be applied to the perils of trying to
catch lightning in a bottle. You know, that classic story
of when there is some kind of organic, chaotic creative
process that really works, and then somebody tries to formalize
it and impose order and it just dies. Uh. You know,
this can be this is true of all different kinds
of creativity and fun. I was trying to think of

(13:26):
a better example from a higher form of literature, but
the best example that actually came to my mind was
the movie Wayne's World. The plot of Wayne's World is
that Wayne and his friend Garth they do a public
access TV show from their basement that is lovable because
it is a stupid, improvised screw around project by a
couple of losers in their basement. But everybody likes it

(13:48):
and it's fun. And then Rob Lowe shows up and
he's a slick business executive and he decides to buy
their show and turn it into a slick high budget
production with sets and sponsors and fashionalism, and the magic
dies and the show is terrible. I'm also reminded, of course,
of the goose that lays the golden eggs? Right, can

(14:09):
you know where the laziest fag was golden eggs? And
then you you, you're like, well, I want to I
want all the eggs, So I'm just gonna cut it open,
you know. Um, And that one kind of lines up
and it kills them, the goose, of course, but that
kind of lines up with this one as well. And
since it's both involved, this um, this this visceral violence
that is perpetrated on something in an attempt to um

(14:30):
to get the most out of it and to instill
some sort of order on things. I guess maybe it's
just because we work in the media space that the
main ideas that come to my brain are media ones.
But it does absolutely seem to be a replica, like
a repeating pattern in the real world. Is like something
is creative and interesting and fun and then order gets
imposed on it and it just dies. Yeah. I wonder

(14:52):
what Dr Ian Malcolm would have had to say about
all this concerning genetically modified, resurrected dinosaurs and so forth.
And he is a worshiper of Hundun in some respects. Yeah, yeah,
he's a practitioner of Hundu, was it? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah.
The chaos chaos theory. Now, another thing Strassbord notes is

(15:12):
that it is tempting to see parallels between the characteristics
of this of this chaos creature, Hundun, and the idea
of a formless void or the undifferentiated cosmos that exists
prior to the creation of the world, or of the
cosmic order in a number of ancient cosmologies. Um, you know,

(15:32):
the noise that existed prior to any signal. Now, why
would that be, especially if you're taking it out of
the broader picture of Hundun as a as an ancient
personification of chaos, and into the specific example of the
dij Young as the creature from the Classic of the
Mountains and zas Why would this be? Well, the di
Young has four wings, six legs, no face, no eyes,

(15:54):
and this seems to imply that its movement is not directed.
It's a kind of omnidirectional wandering without purpose. And also
the comparison of his body to a sack. What do
sacks contain? Well, unless you put something in them, they
contain emptiness. Now another thing. Strasburg says, that's interesting, but
I don't think I really understood. He says that the

(16:16):
body of the dish Young suggests creation myths where the
universe is created from the body of a dead god.
And this absolutely is a fascinating and common type of
creation myth. But I'm not really sure I see the
comparison there. He doesn't really explain that idea. Further, I
wonder if you can make anything of that. Um, I
didn't read about that myself. It may but I you know,

(16:39):
I instantly just think of of it looking like flesh,
kind of just just generic flesh, you know. So here
is like just a lump of the tissue of a god.
And now it has wings and feet. It's kind of
sprouted them. Um, you know John Carpenter's the thing style, right, Yeah,
it's like hills with legs. Now, this doesn't really aid

(16:59):
an understanding of all this at all, but it's kind
of neat. I was looking at through my my normal
monster texts and in Um Joorge Louis borheas the Book
of Imaginary Beings, he does mention this creature in passing um,
referring to it as as tai ching, getting at that
that daijing um name, and he just says that dai

(17:22):
jing is a supernatural bird that lives in the celestial mountains.
It is bright red and has six legs and four wings,
but it has neither a face nor eyes. Now I
mentioned earlier that we would get to an evil hundun. Uh,
so I just want to read a section from Strasbourg
here in in the dijng entry. So regarding the potential

(17:42):
malevolent hundun, he writes, there's another historiographical tradition and Zoe's
narratives to the Spring and Autumn annals, which is a
it's a late fourth century BC text in which Hundun
is the evil son of the r Kong also known
as d Hong. He is known as Hundun that is

(18:03):
confusion because of his lack of moral consciousness. As one
of four evil offspring of the arcs, Hundun is finally
banished along with the rest by Shun, who sends them
all to the periphery to quell demons. Now not really
very familiar with this myth. I don't know if you
know anything about the the the bad deities here are

(18:24):
sent off to the edges of the world to fight demons. Um. Yeah,
I've I've I've read a little bit about this before.
But also the idea of there being four of them
is kind of interesting because I've read that those these
these four perils are sometimes presented as the opposing force
to the four benevolent animals, those being the azure Dragon,

(18:44):
the vermilion bird, the white tiger, and the black tortoise.
Oh okay, yeah, that sounds familiar. Strasburg also writes quote
following another line of linguistic reasoning. Yuan Ka, who was
born in nineteen sixteen, conflated both traditions by dentifying dij
Young with the ark Hong and also with the yellow
the arc, the latter considered the the arc of the

(19:07):
center in Five Agents cosmology. I did five Agents cosmology
come up in the previous episode. I don't believe it did.
But we did touch on on yellow and the many
different names for the yellow whimper or the yellow yellow
yellow the arc. I believe that's what they're referring to here. Yeah. Now.
Strasburg writes that the idea of Hundun as a personification
of confusion or chaos that sort of went along that

(19:28):
that that carried on for a while. There's evidence of
it into the Han and the early six dynasties periods
and uh And eventually in that period he was canonized
as a god, but then after that period he seems
to have mostly vanished from Chinese pantheons. Though the concept
of Hundun not necessarily as a personified deity but just

(19:49):
as an abstract principle, survived in Chinese language and culture
into later periods uh And and Strasburg describes it as
quote an abstract term denoting an imp personal state of
universal chaos. Before the birth of the bipolar forces of
Yin and Yang and Gopu also comments that the creature
dis Young is actually cosmic confusion. Though in the end

(20:13):
it's funny because despite all of these interpretations over the years,
coming back to what was meant in the original text,
Strasbourg writes that quote the textual basis in this passage
of the guide ways for identifying dis Young literally the
arc long River with the mythical figure Hundun is slim,
and he can simply be regarded as a strange creature
in his own right in a sense, like all these

(20:35):
different attempts to understand it, both from the academics and
historians and ancient people and even ourselves. I mean, we're
all kind of just drilling holes into the chaos deity, right,
We're trying to afflict a certain amount of order on
the whole premise. Thank thank But I did want to

(20:57):
take a brief digression. Okay, So what if you assume
Strasburg's final comment here is correct, and that the real
author of this text would have said, no, No, has
nothing to do with the primordial personification of chaos and confusion,
nothing to do with it with a malevolent god. This
is just a beast that has no face and has
four wings and six legs. I wanted to see, Okay,

(21:20):
are there animals without faces? In an interesting way? Because
of course we know there are animals that everybody is
aware of the fact that they have no face, like oysters, sponges, starfish.
These are part of the kingdom of the animals, and
they don't have faces because that's just not how they evolved.
It's not part of their body plan, it's not what
they need. I was wondering, could you find something like
a deer without a face? I didn't find that, But

(21:42):
there are animals with more recognizably face bearing body plans
that nevertheless have evolved to have no face. And the
coolest and creepiest example I came across I was reading
about in a blog post from the Australian government's Natural
Environmental Science its program Marine Biodiversity Hub. There's a blog

(22:03):
post by a researcher named Diane Bray from Mate that
was about a creature that they had discovered during a
deep sea expedition. Uh so, so, the author of this
blog post writes, quote, A large, weird, faceless fish landed
on the deck a couple of days ago. By faceless,

(22:23):
I mean it had no eyes. Nothing, not even tiny
spots or modified areas indicating eyes beneath the skin. It
came from four thousand meters below the surface, where pressures
are huge, the water is a mere one degree celsius,
and the seafloor landscape is pretty barren. Everyone was amazed,
so she writes that they thought maybe they discovered a

(22:45):
new species. They took tissue samples for analysis. They started
trying to come up with a name for the fish.
But then one of their colleagues, a researcher named John
Pokanowski of the c. S I r O S Australian
National Fish Collection and Quote, found something similar while working
his way through various scientific publications. There it was a

(23:06):
cusk eel with the scientific name ty Flonus and nasus.
The word ty flonus is apparently derived from the Greek
typhlos meaning blind, and on nos meaning hake, a blind hake.
Now I've attached a picture of this animal for you
to look at. Here, Rob, the large ones of these
animals really have no externally visible eyes at all. They

(23:30):
do actually have eyes, but this is even creepier than
not having eyes. They have eyes that are completely covered
underneath the skin of the head. Oh interesting, Yeah, that
the picture, it looks interesting. I don't know how grotesque
it actually looks, because you can imagine it just just
emerging from the water and just flopping onto some rice
and it's like instant sushimi. Yeah, except I don't know,

(23:54):
the tail part of it looks a little bit kind
of hairy or stringy and unpleasantly But but I see
what you're getting at. Yeah, it just looks like a
big old lump of lump of fish meat. Yeah, no
eyes to concern the the customer or anything, right that
it just naturally settles your stomach. It quells any concerns
you may have about eating it while it's still wriggling.

(24:16):
But so, Yeah, the eyes are covered by the skin
on the head. Apparently in the younger ones you can
see the eyes through the skin a little bit better.
And it has a tiny mouth on the underside of
its head. But it doesn't you know, it's not something
that's obvious just from looking at it from the front
or from above. And now apparently, uh, like I said this,
this creature had actually been cataloged before it was previously

(24:37):
caught and described during the trawling of the Challenger expedition
in the eighteen seventies. I think it was pulled up
in eighteen seventy four. And we've discussed the Challenger expedition
on the show in the past in previous episodes. You
can check out the archive has searched through it to
find more. But and this was a a research project

(24:58):
that took place on the HMS Challenger in the eighteen
seventies where they would use piano wire to drag these uh,
these trawling samplers along the bottom of the ocean as
this ship was sailing and then trying to pull things
up and see what was alive down there. And apparently
they found one of these things, this cusk eel that
is entirely without a visible face. And you know what,

(25:19):
when I look at it, I do see a kind
of chaos, at least intuitively, because what is chaos, I mean,
at its hard I think chaos is randomness. It's the
implied lack of any purpose or direction or intent, and
the implied lack of senses here suggests a random rather
than an ordered relationship with the environment. But again that's

(25:42):
just you know, our sort of like ignorant observation of
its face. Officially, this certainly is not without senses in reality.
In fact, most deep sea organisms have senses that would
boggle the human mind, like extreme sensitivity to subtle changes
in water pressure or electric fields or things like that. Right,
I mean, it's highly evolved to thrive in its environment.

(26:04):
And if you kind of if you came along and
you're like, I need to help this thing. I need
to start drilling some holes in its head, you know
you would, you would do a great harm. Um. And
I guess that's kind of the plot of the third
Creature from The Black Hole, good film, right, the creature
walks among us. It's just you know, scientists taking the
creature and trying to turn him into something that he is, not,
like applying order to him, trying to make him a

(26:27):
human with disastrous results. Of course, yes, of course that
is a tragic film. Uh yeah, I think we should
all take the we we should all take a page
from the book of do no harm, right, I mean,
you don't don't just assume somebody needs holes drilled in
their face, right, Wait until if they ask you to
drill holes in their face. Okay, but you know this

(26:47):
is not the time for initiative so certainly one of
the more thought provoking creatures in the book in the
classic Uh. But but it's absolutely just feel with with
creatures that are certainly the modern readers just instantly bizarre
and uh. And some of them were even just mentioned

(27:08):
in passing. And that's certainly the case with the one
we're gonna look at next, which is known as look
meat or thing or shiro which can bean looks like
meat or simply this is the one I like the best,
the look flesh creature. Look, mom, it's flesh basically. So
the look flesh creature actually pops up numerous times in

(27:31):
the book, often just casually listed alongside generic things like
green birds or weeping willows. And as am Barrel explains,
the look Flesh creature is essentially a denizen of the
global timeless big Rock Candy Mountain. Uh. You know this,
of course is the old hobo song about, you know,
the the Utopia of Hobos where they hung the jerk

(27:54):
who invented work. Uh, the other cigarette trees. Uh, the
cigarette trees. The dogs all have rubber teeth, and the
cops have wooden legs. Right. So she describes the look
Flesh creature as quote a fable creature, the recurring animalian
motif of numerous Utopian passages in the text, usually associated
with the burial place of deities. So it's been described

(28:17):
as a as being a mass of flesh that looks
like the liver of an ox, but with two eyes.
And if you take some meat off of it, you
cut some meat off of it, and you eat it.
What more, meat instantly grows back on the look flesh creature.
So it's essentially the utopian idea of never ending meat.
It's all you can eat meat right there on the creature.

(28:39):
And this would have especially resonated with impoverished rural people's, uh,
you know, the ancient world. This reminds me of something
that I didn't understand when we first discovered it from
Russian folklore about last October, when you were talking about
that artifact that was the self setting tablecloth, Like it
didn't sound all that interesting until you realize like, oh,

(29:00):
maybe what it's talking about is that it will magically
replenish food automatically. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the idea of here,
here is something I can count on all the time
to give me sustenance, to give me a meal, and
and drink or in this case, just flesh, just some
straight up meat. Here is this marvelous creature that once

(29:20):
you find it, you have meat for life. It just
regenerates all the time. It's the goose that laid the
golden meat. Yeah. I couldn't find an image of this,
but Joe, but for just for us, I included a
picture of a cow's liver which you can look at
and just imagine like two googly eyes staring back at you.
I find it interesting that it has eyes, Like, like,

(29:40):
what is you know, going from a creature that has
no face and no eyes to this creature which doesn't
really have I mean, all it does is exist to
be eaten and to regrow the meat that you eat.
But it has eyes, like you have to I guess
make eye contact with it the entire time. Well that
reminds me. Okay, so what are eyes for? Eyes are
for navigating ones in vironment, for for you know, sensing

(30:02):
your relationship to other objects, for being able to detect
prey or detect predators. But yeah, does this thing not
want to be eaten? Does it need to try to
get away from you when it sees you? Yeah? I
don't or maybe the eyes are there, so you do
have to make eye contact with it, so you can't
completely forget that it's a living organism. I don't know, uh,

(30:22):
it's uh. I have no idea. So I was trying
to find examples in nature of wild organisms that mimic
raw meat in reality, and it did find a few
that are that are very interesting. Now one, I don't
know if it mimics raw meat for any reason, but
it does look very cool. There's a species of fungus
that is known as Fistilina hepatica. It's a fungus with

(30:44):
a fruiting body that's often said to look like beef steak,
or like beef liver, or like ox tongue, and it
really really does look a lot like raw liver meat,
especially sometimes when you cut it open. The name hepatica
in the species name comes from the word for liver.
I've read that it's found in parts of Europe, in Africa,

(31:05):
and North America. I think I've mainly seen it referred
to as growing in like the British Isles, but I
included a cross section for you to look at here,
Rob And I don't know when you cut it open,
it looks like wag you beef. Yeah, it does look
like meat. Yeah, it looks like flesh. Look flash if
you will, yes, And when you cut it, apparently it will.
It will have a red juice that runs from it,

(31:26):
just like the myoglobin running out of a you know,
a raw steak that you'd cut open. It is edible,
at least in some growth stages, and sometimes has been
used in cooking. But I don't know. I've seen differing
accounts on different websites. I was looking at some I'm saying, yeah,
it's you know, it's a good mushroom. It's a it's
a choice product. I've seen other things kind of negging

(31:46):
its taste and texture, saying that it's kind of tough
and sour, acidic tasting. I'm a pretty adventurous eater, by
the way, and it it does look like like something
I would be hesitant to to bite into. Um well,
I mean with all things mushroom related, Um, you know,
I would want somebody to vouch for it that it
isn't you know, to me personally, and make sure I'm

(32:08):
following some sort of instructions on preparation. But I mean,
I'd give it a shot. I would like to try
the meat of the look flesh creature. Sure, whatever reality
it takes. Now, as I said a minute ago, I
could not find any evidence that its resemblance to raw
meat is at all adaptive. It seems like it's probably
just a coincidence that it looks like we're all meat.

(32:28):
This is a parasitic fungus that grows on living or
dead woods such as oak. But there are organisms that
resemble raw meat that absolutely do so for evolutionary reasons
where it is not just a coincidence. Probably the most
exciting example is the genre of plants that are widely
known as carrion flowers that probably the most famous of

(32:52):
which is the titan aurum also known as the amorphophallus
or a Morphofilus titanum, which parts that name for a minute,
It basically means like huge, weird fallus and then these
are very impressive looking flowers. Yeah, amazing. So the Amorphophallus
titanum is a giant, gigantic flowering plant that's native to Sumatra.

(33:15):
It only blooms usually once every two to ten years
in the wild, and each bloom only lasts about a
day in the wild, so it's reproductive window is is
extremely narrow compared to its total lifespan, and when it opens,
it unfurls this giant ring of something that looks like
flower petals, but they're not actually petals. It's a type

(33:38):
of modified leaf tissue called a space, but it looks
almost exactly like glistening raw beef. And the blooming corpse
flower here emits a smell of rotting meat. It actually
emits a complex bouquet of smells, but one of the
dominant aromas within that is the smell of rotting meat
in order to attract insects that are normally either carryon

(34:00):
feeders or would be flies looking to lay their larva
and a rotting corpse of something in the forest. These
are the plant's pollinators. So by admitting the smell of
meat and looking like meat, it draws in things that
are trying to find some dead meat in the forest.
They crawl all over it, they get the pollen of
the flant on their little legs and bodies, and then
they carry that off to another big old flower that

(34:22):
smells like meat. So it's rotten meat sex. But you know,
one can imagine that if you encountered something like this
you you might think, well, this is limitless meat, this
is meat growing like a plant. Um. So. And of
course this makes me think of of all of our
various modern enterprises involving you know, artificial meat, synthetic flesh,

(34:45):
synthetic flesh. Um, but also um, you know that grown meat, etcetera.
Like it's it's kind of all an attempt to to
make the look flesh creature a reality. I wonder if
every time we say synthetic flesh, that's gonna draw up
that that doctor x Q in there synthetic flesh. I

(35:05):
hope so. UM. I also have to say, as far
as like weird mushrooms go, there's a lot of mushroom
descriptions in the shan haijing Uh. For instance, the mushroom
people show up in the burrow translation. There are a
lot of different types of people. But there's also a
mushroom dog at one point, which I don't think. I
kind of interested. Oh yeah, it's in there, mushroom dog.

(35:28):
Tell me about the mushroom dog. Um. I think it
was more it was one of these things where it's
not I don't think it's actually a dog that's made
out of mushrooms or is like a or grows like
a mushroom. It's something to do with like the description
of the of the animal. I was gonna try to see,
can you get a shelf stable like dried mushroom dog
that you reconstitute? No, I know, but that would be

(35:49):
that sounds like I would be in line with the
look flesh creature for sure. Right, Let's look at another creature.
This next one is called the zoe wo um, which
Barrel translates as escort my. But here's the Strasburg translation

(36:10):
for this description. In the land of the Lynn clan
is a rare beast as large as a tiger, five colored,
and with a tail longer than its body. It is
called the zoe wo when writing it, one can cover
one thousand lee in a single day. Uh so, And
then Barrel's translation is virtually the same, except with a
different term for it. So this is a fabulous animal

(36:32):
in the in the illustrations that Strasburg provides, it looks
kind of like a a fierce horse. I guess you
would say it looks kind of like a horse with
a with a dog like face. Yeah, it's a It's
a fabulous animal that pops up in other texts as well,
including the Ancient Book of Songs, and it's sometimes described

(36:53):
as being white with black stripes, as being a righteous
animal that is either strictly vegetarian or is only eating
the meat of animals that have died of natural causes.
And so there's apparently been some discussion that this could
have been in some way connected to the panda. They
could have been based on descriptions of the panda, or
you know. It kind of then takes on a life
of its own in the same way that the kailin

(37:16):
has been linked to giraffes. And interestingly enough, one of
these magical creatures is depicted in one of the Fantastic
Beasts movies. Um, I don't think it looks particularly panda
ask in those, but uh they made it look otherworldly
and weird for sure. Now, in the last episode I
mentioned in Passing the Land of Google, which which Barrel mentioned,

(37:38):
so of course I had to read more and find
out what's up with the Land of of Google, which
is also known as may Uh. So this is what
Beryl has in her translation the Land of Google. The
beings there have a human body with a black head,
and their eyes are said vertically in their face vertical eyes. Yeah,

(38:00):
and she she writes that. A parallel passage in a
fifth century BC text describes the inhabitants of Ghoul as
having poor sign heads the heads of pigs with vertical eyes,
but also loose hair, which I'm guessing means like wildish hair,
and Strasburg discusses them as the may hobgoblins, sometimes associated
with other creatures, the Chai hobgoblins and the wang ling

(38:22):
the wangling goblins. Uh So they're all dangerous creatures that
lurk in the wilds, and if you happen to be
an unwary traveler, they might jump out and attack you. Uh.
I think I've mentioned before, Like, you know, obviously the
words goblin and hobgoblin are are English language words and
Western words that have been um put into you know,

(38:44):
we're engaging in transliteration here. But but still there's something
about there's something that a goblin is that feels universal.
There's something like a goblin in every culture. Now would
that extend to the fact that there's a troll too
in every culture? I don't know, but I mean troll ogre.
These are other terms you often find in translations of

(39:05):
of of mythic and folklore texts from you know, from
from various Western cultures, but also from from Eastern cultures.
You know, when when describing things like there's the there,
the there these, there's the ogre, there's the giant, there's
the dragon, like these are kind of the the basic
forms that a lot of our stories revolve around. Now,
just briefly, there is, uh, there's one creature that, in

(39:28):
Strasbourg's translation, was referred to as the Brave pig. And
I really like that name. Yeah, yeah, this one so
um apparently how she it literally means hero pig. Uh, so,
brave pig, hero pig um. But as to what it
actually is, it seems like it's a porcupine. There's a

(39:50):
lot of discussion that is just a porcupine. Uh, this
is the barrel translation. There is an animal on this
mountain which looks like a hog, but it has white
hair that is as long as a large hairpin and
black at the tips. Its name is the porcupine. Um.
So yeah, I like that. The brave pig, the porcupine.
I can see it, you know, Strasberg mentions in his

(40:11):
commentary on the Brave pig that it has been regarded
by many commentators as just a porcupine. This is like
the mundane animal of porcupine being described here. Um. But
he does mention that go pu in his early commentary
on the Classic Road about this and said that the
brave pig was several feet in length and that it

(40:31):
shot its quills at things. Now, this is interesting because
I was still under the mistaken impression that the porcupine can, yeah,
shoot its squills from a distance. But apparently that's not true.
Strasberg mentions this, and I looked it up. There's apparently
not actually evidence that the porcupine can shoot its quills
from a distance. A lot of things I think just

(40:52):
run up to a porcupine and get its squills stuck
in their snout or their nose or something, and then
you know, run squealing off, but it doesn't actually shoot
them like a projectile. Huh. Yeah. I wonder where that
exactly comes from. If it's is it based in just
people winding up with with porcupine quills stuck in them
and and and needing to alter the story. So I

(41:13):
don't know. I didn't try to touch it. No, it
shot at the abbey. It jumped out of the out
of the edge of the woods. It shot me with quills,
and then it ran away. I mean, it does kind
of remind me of how you ever seen the phenomenon
of a kid is being overly rough with a pet
and then the pet kind of lashes out at them,
and then the kid immediately starts saying, like it jumped
at me, it was being mean, you know, like they're

(41:35):
they're all like, within seconds trying to change the story
to the pet being the aggressor Oh yeah, yeah, children,
children versus pets. That old, that old rivalry, you know,
just by association that they're talking about the porcupine. This
also made me want to briefly mention another creature that
Strasburg translates as the thoroughly odd like thoroughly hyphen odd,

(41:58):
or chung chi, And so the translation goes, two hundred
sixty lee farther west stands Mount Gui. There is a
beast dwelling on its heights, whose form resembles an ox
with the needles of a way porcupine. It is called
chung chi, and it makes a sound like a dog howling.
It is a man eater, So like that's the last

(42:20):
line there, it's yeah, it's got needles. It's like an
ox needles like a porcupine, howls like a dog, and
it eats people. And so Strasberg says that the thoroughly
Odd is said to eat people who wear long hair untied,
which he says is culturally interesting because that is the
style that was believed at the time to be characteristic

(42:41):
of demons and of shaman's Yes, I read that. Yeah, yeah,
and that's interesting because of the thing we talked about
in the last episode. Uh or actually no, I guess
we didn't really get into this in depth, but the
idea that uh or the question of where a lot
of this knowledge that's recorded in the Classic of the
Mount since He's comes from, some of it may have

(43:02):
been collected from traditions that were part of the sort
of the smaller, more localized shaman leadership culture of ancient
China that was over time replaced by by more central
or imperialist rule. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine someone
traveling out to these different areas and saying, Okay, well,
what do you guys believe out here? Which gods do

(43:24):
you worship? And sometimes they're the same gods or some
of the same gods, but with you know, different twists
and turns and how they presented. Other times they're they're
different dentities entirely, and then asking well, what kind of
creatures are out here? What kind of strange creatures are
out here? What do they do? What do they look like? Uh? Yeah,
and apparently this one it likes to eat people with
the hairstyle that would have been common of shamans and

(43:47):
of demons. Uh. Also, Strasburg says that sometimes the victims
are consumed beginning with the head. Some sources start with that.
Other versions say that they are consumed beginning with the feet. Um,
which he says, you know, that could be a result
of differences in early translations, like one translation of the
classics says one way and other translations is a different way. Um.

(44:09):
But then there are several interesting things here. So he
says the thoroughly odd was historic sized as another untalented
son of a the arc the lesser Brilliance in a
passage in Zoe's Narratives, the same passage that mentioned the
hounda and remember the idea of the evil version of
the Honda, and as this like bad offspring of the

(44:30):
the Arc. Well, here we've got the thoroughly Odd as
the untalented son of the Arc, which makes me think
of the comparison to the Gnostic demiurge or the Gnostic
you know, like Yaldaba Oath, the bad god who created
the world, who was like the the crappy son of
a higher being. Right, and of course you can't help
but compare that to um to the human world, right,

(44:52):
like the like the good for nothing prints in any
given scenario, right the guy to the new CEO of
the company taken over for his dad, and as everybody's
just like oh no. And then finally, Strasburg just notes
that there are other descriptions of the thoroughly Odd in
different sources and places throughout his history. There's a place

(45:13):
where he's referred to as a tiger with wings. There
are other places where the thoroughly Odd is said to
be quote a perverse creature who devours those who are
loyal and trustworthy, but offers freshly killed meat to the
evil and rebellious, perhaps because an alternate version of this
text describes him as having a human body with a

(45:35):
dog's head and is making a sound like a dog
go poo in an encomium pronounced him a divine dog. Mhm.
But yeah, I like this idea of he's a perverse
deity who goes out and he like eats good people.
But if you're bad, he'll bring you meat. Oh man,
that is indeed thoroughly odd. Alright, Well, we have I
think one more to discuss here, that is um. And

(45:57):
again the book is filled with creatures that are mentioned
with a fair amount of a little bit of depth
or otherwise just in passing. It's it's God's it's fantastic creatures,
it's fantastic descriptions of commonplace creatures. It's uh, it's passing
references to things like the uh like like the synthetic

(46:18):
flesh creature that we talked about earlier, synthetic flesh. Um.
So there's just all sorts of stuff in there, things
that that were animals, things that might have been animal,
real life animals, and then everything else you can imagine.
But this last one here is the juon, the Vermilion
yon beast, and it's described as an ape with a

(46:40):
white head and red feet, and it's an omen of
great war if glimpsed by humans. Strasburg writes the go
Poo pondered that this was one of the beasts along
with the fushi bird that quote marked the boundaries of reason.
And so Strasburg quotes the poet go Pou here, Uh,

(47:00):
this is a nice little translation, has a nice flow
to it. Quote the fushi and the vermilion yon beast
you've seen mean war different species, identical elect a cosmic
pattern one cannot ignore. It must be in their nature
to be so. But their method is too subtle to explore. Okay,
so we know what they mean, but we can't say why.

(47:22):
Don't even ask. Yeah. And the illustration that the Strasbourg
includes from the old text here, um, it just looks
kind of like a monkey. I guess there's nothing that's
not really one of the more elaborate illustrations. Uh, but
it is a monkey that you do not want to
see because it's just a dire omen uh. And of
course that's something that pops up with a lot of
these creatures described. You know, it's about what does it

(47:43):
look like? What does it do? Um? If you can
eat it, what that will do for you medicinally, but
then also sometimes like just seeing them, what that does
for you? What what is it? Is it an omen? Uh?
Does it mean that something good will happen, There'll be
a bumper crop, or will there be a great war?
As the Lost Boys saying, I'm the monkey that you've
always been afraid of? Yeah, pretty much, Well, Robert, I

(48:07):
have so enjoyed this journey through the classic of the
mountains and the seas. Yeah, this has been fun. And
uh yeah, I for anyone out there who's interested, you
can you can definitely get English translations of the shan Haijing. Um.
We mentioned the Strasbourg and the Barrel. Those are both
definitely affordable texts, but there are other illustrated There are
other illustrated versions as well. There are other translations available.

(48:28):
Uh so, yeah, dive into it. They're even some you know,
good resources online, people doing uh you know, creature breakdowns
and lists and their own illustrations on some of these.
And of course some of these names and entities have
taken on new life and in fictions as well. I
was running across some of that when I was researching, Um,
you know, these various entities that pop up. Now, obviously

(48:50):
we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Uh, do
you have anything additional to to add about about the
shan Haijing, about any of the creatures and entities that
we discussed in this episode. Uh. Even so, we would
love to hear from you, even if you maybe you're
an artist and you want to give a give it
a crack and draw the Hundun or some other creature.
Do so, we'd love to take a look at it.

(49:10):
Oh yeah, I wonder if we can get a show
T shirt with the Hundun or the young that I
would be That would be very interesting. Yeah, I'd be
up for it. Hunding stickers to just put everywhere and nowhere,
all right. In the meantime, if you want to listen
to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, uh,
you know where to find them. In the Stuff to
Blow your Mind feed. You can find that wherever you

(49:31):
get your podcasts and you get your core episodes of
Stuff to Blow your Mind. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Uh,
Monday's we try to do a listener mail Wednesday, usually
an artifact episode. In Friday, we do Weird How Cinema,
which is just our chance to focus on weird films. Uh,
And wherever you happen to listen to the podcast wherever
you get it. We just asked the you rate, review
and subscribe if the platform gives you the power to

(49:52):
do so, you just thinks. As always to our excellent
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so it 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, Doctor, Stuff

(50:15):
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