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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 do so, you just thinks. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this up 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 to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.