THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The Classic of Regions Within the Seas: West lays out the holy mountain with an architect's precision: the Hollow of Kunlun stands in the northwest, the Supreme God's capital below heaven, eight hundred li on a side and ten thousand ren high. On its summit grows the tree-grain, a cereal five xun tall and five armspans around. Each face of the mountain has nine wells railed with jade and nine gates, and at the gates stands the nine-headed Kaiming beast, for this is the dwelling of the hundred gods. The Red River rises at its southeast corner, the Yellow River at its northeast, the Black River at its northwest. One caveat closes the description: none but a figure like the archer Yi can scale its cliffs.
The Classic of the Western Mountains records the same capital under the guardianship of the tiger-bodied, nine-tailed god Luwu, and the Huainanzi rebuilds Kunlun as a ladder of nine terraced walls, each stage closer to the gods. From the Warring States onward the mountain accreted the Queen Mother of the West, the Jasper Pool, and the drugs of deathlessness; the Tale of King Mu describes the Zhou king feasting with her there. Under Emperor Wu of Han the court fixed the name Kunlun on the ranges south of Khotan, anchoring the mythical axis to the real mountains that still bear it. Kunlun is the western pole of Chinese mythic geography, its Olympus.
