Chinese MYTHICAL Animals That ALSO EXISTED in the WEST!

Dragons, phoenixes, and furballs with wings and no face. Where's his face? Chinese mythology certainly has some strange creatures that may or may not have existed, and many of the animals that you've seen in movies like the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, for example, came from the ancient book called the Shan Hai Jing, or the Classic of Mountains and Seas. The book dates back to about the 4th century BC and details animals that were supposed to have existed between that time and around 5,000 years ago. Like, it shows people riding chariots pulled by dragons, for example. But then it also shows really strange things like people with holes in their chests. Wasn't there a movie about that? Look at me, Ernest. Just look at me. And snakes with human heads. But in this video, I want to talk about three creatures that exist both in the Shan Hai Jing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, but also, strangely, in Western historical sources from the other side of the globe to China. How could writers in those two places, separated by thousands of miles of continents and oceans with no modern means of communication, just coincidentally make up the exact same thing? This makes you think that maybe, just maybe, there's some truth to some of these mystical animals. So the first one I want to talk about is Xing Tian. Now, Xing Tian is a specific person. He was a court official under the Flame Emperor who was then defeated by the Yellow Emperor in around 2700 BC, so basically right at the start of Chinese civilization. Chinese civilization is generally believed to be around 5,000 years long, so that puts you at almost at that length. After the Flame Emperor was defeated, Huang Di, or the Yellow Emperor, became the supreme god ruler of China. But Xing Tian wanted to keep on fighting, and what happens next is recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Xing Tian fought with the Yellow Emperor for divine power, so the Yellow Emperor cut off his head and put it on Changyang Mountain. But he then used his nipples as eyes and his belly button as a mouth and grasped his shield and axe and danced around. So you see Xing Tian with a face on his torso, brandishing his weapons at the heavens because he was angry at the Yellow Emperor, who was a god so connected to the heavens, for cutting off his head. Thus his name, Xing Tian, which I assume they came up with afterwards because it's related to the whole incident, means punishing heaven. That's what he wanted to do because he was angry at the heavens. Now you may think, hey, funny story, it's probably all made up, but the thing that will really blow your mind is that the exact same thing exists in the West. Perhaps cutting off someone's head and having them grow a face in the middle of their torso was a common punishment by the gods back then. The Greek historian Herodotus, forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrong, who also lived and wrote his works around the same time, 400 BC, also made a reference to a race of headless people who lived in North Africa around the area that is modern-day Libya. This race has come to be called the Blemis or Blemis. And medieval books are full of references to knights encountering Blemis on their travels. There's a map of the world created around 1300 in England known as the Hereford map since it's stored in Hereford Cathedral, and it shows a place called Blemis with two creatures with faces in the middle of their chests depicted standing at that area. English statesman and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh talks of sightings of Blemis in his book about his 1595 voyage to Guyana in South America like literally there's one on the cover of the book. Look at that. Although Raleigh didn't actually see the creatures himself, he based it off the fact that apparently every child in two different provinces said that it was true. It's kind of like you went to a region in the US where everyone says Bigfoot exists, but you haven't seen him yourself. Come on, Sir Walter, at least give us some grainy cell phone video. So that particular one I'm not so sure about, but the fact that the exact same creature is referenced in the traditions of the East and the West makes me think that there might be something more to this story. Let's now move on to our second Chinese mythical creature, Chinese mermaids. Now, mermaids may feel like a Western myth, with Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid being perhaps the most famous instance of them in literature and film. However, mermaids actually existed in Asia too. But let's backtrack a little bit first. The earliest examples of these creatures in the West are in the form of sirens in Greek mythology, and these were actually depicted as half human, half bird. And guess what? In China's Shanhaijing, we have a variety of creatures that have the body of a bird and a human head, like this one or this one or this one. We then see mermaids appearing in the West as we move into the Christian era, and they were now half human, half fish instead of half bird, but they did the same thing. They were often in the form of a beautiful woman who would tempt sailors on their voyages. And guess what? Mermaids exist in Chinese historical writings too. There's an early depiction of one in the Shanhaijing simply described as 人面而有身, human face with a fish body. These pictures, by the way, were added to the book later during the Ming dynasty, and this is a lot less attractive than what I think of as a mermaid. I don't think that's what the author originally had in mind. The fish part shouldn't come that far up the body. And what is that hairstyle? There's a record of mermaids during the Qin dynasty in the Shi Ji, and there's a further description of mermaids in the Song dynasty book called Taiping Guangji. Mermaids, they exist in the Eastern Sea. The big ones are about five or six feet. Their shape is that of a person. They have eyebrows and eyes, a mouth and nose, hands, and a head like that of a beautiful woman, but they don't have feet. Their skin is like white jade. That part of them doesn't have fish scales, but has light hairs that are different colours, light and soft, one or two inches long. The hair on their head is like that of a horsetail, five or six feet. There are later accounts too, even up to the Qing dynasty, China's last dynasty, and they all typically say that Chinese mermaids don't harm people. In Japan, we have depictions of Asian mermaids too, and guys, again, you are missing the point. The fish part comes way too far up the body. So instead, check out this description of a Chinese mermaid in Stephen Chow's 2016 film, The Mermaid. Much better. And in that movie, the mermaids and mermen even fight and have superpowers and... Oh, God! Yeah, let's move on to our final creature, Chinese centaurs. Now, centaurs come from ancient Greek myths, and they are half human, half horse, and appear in ancient sculptures, on pottery, and in Roman mosaics. And in the Shan Hai Jing, we see some very similar animals described as ren mian er ma shen, a human face with a horse body. There are various other types of four-legged animals with human faces too. The classic of mountains and seas was written in around 400 BC, which overlaps with Greek culture when centaurs supposedly would have roamed across Greece and Cyprus. And guys, whether it is a xingtian, a mermaid, or a centaur, I don't know whether any of this is real or not, but it's fascinating that the exact same creatures have been recorded in the historical writings of both ancient China and ancient Western civilizations. It makes you think that there has to be more to it than just the imagination of the ancients. All right, everyone, that is the video. Thanks for watching. If you want to know more about ancient Greek stuff that we just touched upon in this video, you can check out the playlist on Greek legends from my co-host Jared's channel, Storytime with Jared. Please subscribe here if you're new, and you can consider subscribing to Jared's channel too, and we'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.