Chinese MYTHICAL Animals EXPLAINED...

dragons phoenixes lions and weird furballs with wings and no face Chinese history had some really interesting mythical animals and in this video I want to go through a scene in the Marvel movie Shang Chi which accurately depicts a load of these mythical animals with 21st Century Quality CGI we have six animals to talk about and we are going to tell you what they look like their trades how they fit into Chinese mythology and also of course how to say their name in Chinese hi everyone welcome to learn Chinese now on this channel we not only teach Chinese language but teach you stories myths and legends of from Chinese history and if you like the sound of that do subscribe for new videos from myself and my co-host Jared every week so looking into Chinese mythical animals a lot of these first appear in a book called Shanghai Jing or the classic of mountain and seas this book dates back to before the Qin dynasty so before 221 BC and the author is unknown the book details 277 different animals including some that today we would regard as mythical but who knows maybe there really were Phoenix is flying around in China 2000 years ago now in the book there are some really weird ones like this snake with a human head on it I kid you not that is actually in the book ancient China was a really weird place that one actually kind of reminds me of the Internet troll face you see the likeness there but anyway in this video we are going to go through all six animals that we see in the movie so let's get started number one now this is the one that in the movie they call Morris and yes a d tiang has no face where's his face he's a bit sensitive about that the Shanghai Jing recalls that ADI tiang has wings six legs and no face and it also has a yellowish sack-like body it is a kind of heavenly animal associated with song and dance and in the movie it is one that guides them to the mythical land of dalor number two fun Huang or Phoenix [Music] when the characters enter the mythical realm after a beautiful piece of product placement by BMW check out the light sensitive headlights switching off the first animal that they see is the Phoenix which in Chinese is called Fung Hwang I think those birds on fire really and yes it is often depicted on fire or with a fireball next to it and it's said to have come from the Sun the Fung Huang in Chinese mythology is said to be the Banyan one or the king of a hundred Birds basically the king of all bird species the bird that corresponds to the Phoenix in the human world is the peacock I.E peacocks in the human world are phoenixes in the heavens and the original shape of the Phoenix is said to come from the golden pheasant you know that bird that looks like Trump but Jokes Aside the Phoenix is seen as a very positive mythical animal the Shanghai Jing states that its head symbolizes virtue its wings righteousness its back etiquette its breast benevolence and its belly faith it sings and dances and if you see one it means that all under Heaven is peaceful the Phoenix is often paired with the dragon here it is on the former national emblem of China that was used from 1912 to 1928. you can also see it with the dragon in the Chinese saying long one or hope Sons become dragons and daughters become phoenixes this Chinese saying expresses Chinese parents wish for their sons and daughters to be successful now I know you want to hear about the dragon now but we've got a few more to get through first number three Jo weihu or nine-tailed fox yeah you don't really need an explanation as to what this one is it kind of does what it says on the tin I think there's a Pokemon that's kind of based on this looks pretty similar the Xian hygiene states in the mountains of Ching Cho which is an ancient place in China there is an animal its form is that of a fox but it has nine tails and there it is in shangchi with one two three Fourier yeah I think that's nine in ancient China Fox Spirits were thought to have mystical Powers such as being able to shapeshift into the form of a beautiful woman to seduce men and there is no more famous of an example of this than the story of daaji the favorite consort of the last king of the ancient Shang Dynasty she's said to have been a fox Spirit who first killed and then impersonated the real daji so shape-shifting you know you think she's a beautiful woman but she's not she could be anything now whether it was actual shape-shifting or just the fox Spirit killing dodgy soul and then taking over her body is not clear but like other monarchs who were under the spell of evil beings daji led the last king of the shun to neglect his duty duties for the nation and even start indulging in sadistic Hobbies torturing his subjects for amusement it is commonly believed that daji a fox Spirit impersonating a human led to the downfall of the entire Shang Dynasty anyway let's get back to the nine-tailed fox there are Chinese myths that say that once a fox Spirit gets to a thousand years old it can Ascend to heaven and become a Celestial Fox and the celestial Fox is the nine-tailed fox but that doesn't change the fact that in Chinese mythology Fox Spirits are not benevolent think of them as kind of like Loki they have a connection with the Gods in the heavens but they are kind of like tricksters and they can cause chaos and death in the human world alright let's move on to the next one number four chilin so after they passed the nine-tailed foxes they run into this guy who's just minding his own business crossing the street this is the chilin or Chinese unicorn it has a body like a horse scales like a dragon and usually two horns that's a weird horse one's in Shanghai are turquoise but they can actually be a variety of different colors and they are often depicted as golden the Chilean can also be referred to as just Lin and it was first mentioned in the poem the feet of the Lin which was included in the should seeing a book compiling poems from the 11th to 7th Century BC the spring and Autumn annels or trunching that cover a period from 722 to 481 BC record that in the spring of the 14th year of Duke Eye of Lou they went hunting in the west and caught a Chillin It seems sometime after that the chilin stopped appearing in the human world and became a creature of Legend maybe they were still sometimes cited by people because they have been regularly depicted in paintings on pieces of China and in statues throughout Chinese history and now many Chinese and Asian brands also use the Chilean in their branding like Kirin beer from Japan for example Kirin is the Japanese pronunciation of chilin and you can see a golden chilin in the middle of their logo and any Chinese restaurant that calls itself the golden unicorn and yeah there's like 5 000 of these restaurants across the world the animal that they're actually referring to is the chilin you can see on this one in New Jersey it says jinlin on the sign and one of my favorite dim sum restaurants in New York's Chinatown is called literally unicorn golden Pavilion but in English they just translate it to Golden unicorn according to Legend chilin appear when there is a benevolent ruler for example the first chilin appeared in the garden of the yellow emperor in the year 2697 BC Chilean are also known to appear with the arrival of a Great Sage in another example a chilin appeared to confucius's pregnant mother before she gave birth in the 6th Century BC in the Ming Dynasty when Chinese explorers brought a giraffe back from Africa they presented it to the yongla Emperor as a chilin the emperor immediately remarked that this was no chilin and he was not a sage because I guess he thought they were trying to flatter him saying he was a great Sage oh look at chilin appeared but actually in Japanese a giraffe is still called chilin same characters although it's pronounced Kirin in Japanese alright let's move on to one more before we give you the Dragon number 5. this is the lion-like creature that we see walking around on the grass as they get to the village in the mystical realm now since China does not have any indigenous Lions of its own any creature in Chinese mythology that looked like a lion was referred to as a swan need but later on when Chinese people encountered actual Lions along the Silk Road and in India they discovered that they looked pretty similar to the Swani and they adopted the term or just Shu which is believed to be a phonetic translation of the Persian word for lion which is pronounced sir actually even the word Swani is thought to have come from a phonetic translation of an ancient Indian word for lions and Chinese people did quite widely know of lions in the Han Dynasty and probably knew of them to some extent even earlier there's one historical record for example of an Envoy from a certain Central Asian country present a lion as a gift to the Han Court in the year 87 A.D there is also a Buddhist association with lions since at the time many Buddhist monks would have traveled through Central Asia to India to study Buddhism and they would have seen Lions the Buddhist monks and Priests came back to China with stories about the prowess and might of the lion and it became an animal with a mystical Aura surrounding it and it seems swanny not only refers to lions in the human world but lion-like creatures in the heavens too during the Han Dynasty the Han Court adopted the lion as protectionist iconography Chinese people depicted lions in statues guarding the entrance to Temples watching over the incense burner and also at the gates to Imperial palaces these Stone lion statues or shushu are always in pairs with the male depicted resting its poor on a bull and the female with a lion cub under its paw during the Ming Dynasty there was the theory of the nine sons of the dragon or long Shang jyotsu of which the lion was one of them but I know you guys now want to hear about the dragon itself so without further ado number six the Chinese dragon or long if there is one single mythical creature that is most associated with Chinese culture it is the Chinese dragon which is pronounced long now this is not the same creature as the fire-breathing Western dragon that we see in stories like The Hobbit or King Arthur that is more like a flying evil dinosaur that breathes fire the Chinese dragon is actually more associated with water just like the dragon in Shang Chi it manipulates water to fight the evil Beast the classic odd dragons or longjing that was written in the Qing Dynasty it says that dragons are the leaders of all water-based creatures and that it is a Divine animal and it controls the rain it comes in both good and evil varieties but in general dragons are seen as mostly positive they are known as rulers of the Seas and controllers of the weather the book goes on to describe a dragon's appearance with a body like a snake scales like a fish a head like a camel and eyes like a ghost not sure what eyes like a ghost looked like but anyway there are also different colors of dragons and different types of dragons that do different things and dragons have a really really long history in China there are Stone carvings of dragons that have been found that date back to as early as 6 000 Years BC here is a carving of a dragon from the Joe Dynasty the Shanghai Jing actually refers to ancient people and gods Riding Dragons as a mode of transportation just like Shanti dragons have now also become a symbol of authority they became associated with the Imperial family during the Han Dynasty when the founder of the dynasty lilbun stated that when his mother gave birth to him she dreamed of a dragon during the Tang Dynasty Emperors wore yellow clothes embroidered with a dragon Motif and Chinese people even refer to themselves as long datron rent or descendants of the dragon and thus you see the dragon on the first ever flag of China that was used during the Qing Dynasty when all the other Western countries kind of bullied China into coming up with a flag because they all had flags and just in case you thought that this was all fake there have been numerous dragon sightings some of them caught on camera and in 2017 villagers from a place called in China actually found a 60-foot long skeleton in a field that resembled a dragon baffled researchers and the History Channel even made a documentary about it now many of these stories about dragons and other mythological animals throughout history were written down as historical fact it's your choice whether you think that there are really dragons or people Road dragons or there are Chinese unicorns or whatever but at a minimum you can take these stories as interesting myths and that is your set of six mythical animals as depicted in the movie Shang Chi which one is your favorite do leave your comments below and do subscribe subscribe to our channel for more incredible stories from Chinese history right I need to be somewhere I better call my dragon giddy up