Tiger-Striped, White-Headed Horse-Beast of Mount Niuyang
The Classic of the Southern Mountains places the lushu on Mount Niuyang, whose southern slope yields red gold and northern slope white gold. The beast is boldly patterned: the body of a horse, a pure white head, a coat striped like a tiger's, and a red tail. Its voice, the text says, is like yao — song without instruments, as the commentator Guo Pu glosses it — so that the creature seems to sing rather than neigh.
As with most beasts in the book, the entry ends in a prescription, and the lushu's concerns wearing rather than eating: carry its hide on your person and your descendants will flourish, a formula that turns a hunter's trophy into an amulet of fertility. In Ming and Qing illustrated editions of the Shanhaijing the lushu is drawn as a proud tiger-striped horse, one of the most recognizable figures in the picture scrolls, and modern writers on the bestiary's possible originals like to set its tiger markings beside the zebra and the okapi, if only as a curiosity.
