The Fish of the Qiao River with One Head and Ten Bodies
The first guideway of the Northern Mountains records Qiaoming Mountain, source of the Qiao River, which flows west into the Yellow River. The river teems with the heluo fish: one head trailing ten bodies, so that a swimming specimen must have moved like an animated sheaf. Its voice is nothing like a fish's — the text says it barks like a dog. As usual the classic appends the practical note: eaten, it cures abscesses and swellings.
One head with multiple bodies is a recurring design in the classic. The zi fish of the eastern fourth guideway likewise has 'one head and ten bodies', while the feiyi serpent of Hunxi Mountain inverts the ratio with one head and two bodies. The heluo is the most famous of this family, and illustrated editions usually render it as a single fish head towing ten parallel tails. Modern readers have guessed at a squid or cuttlefish behind the description — one head, a bundle of limbs — or at a strung catch of fish garbled in transmission; neither reading has settled the matter.
The classic lists many medicinal fish, and the heluo belongs to its surgical wing, prescribed against abscesses. On the same mountain lives the beast menghuai, which wards off evil: one fish and one beast, one for healing and one for protection, an unusually serviceable pairing for the northern mountains.
