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Bestiary
A growing improvisational compendium channeling the mythical creatures of 山海经 (Classic of Mountains and Seas) referencing a contemporary interpretation, Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas, written by Jiankun Sun and illustrated by Siyu Chen.










“The daughters of Di, Ehuang and Nuying, were both married to Yao’s son, Shun. They saved him from several assassination attempts by family members, though he subsequently died on a trip to Cangwu in the south and was buried at Jiuwu shan. They followed their husband’s footsteps to the Yuan and Xiang Rivers, where their tears of sorrow landed on bamboo, creating spots that never went away. They threw themselves into the Xiang River and, with their husband, became the Three Xiang River Gods.”

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“Unlike common stags, the Fuzhu had a rack of four horns. Its appearance was a harbinger of disastrous floods in the foothills, and many people attributed the province’s history of frequent flooding to the advent of the Fuzhu.”

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“Far back in the remote past, Gang shan rose skyward in the southwest corner of present-day Tianshui city in Gansu Province. It was home to an odd humanoid called Shenchi, which some have mistakenly proclaimed to be a local mountain spirit. It was, in reality, a fetching simian creature with a human face and an animal’s torso. It had only one arm and one leg, on opposite sites of an upright body. Its cry, hardly more than a sigh or a moan, was like a sad commentary on its deformed body. Rain stopped falling as it moved from tree to tree, a power that may have compensated for the absence of symmetrical limbs. Its passage through the forest canopy was lopsided and perilous.”

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