THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
From Mount Manqu, rich in gold and jade above and arrow-bamboo below, rises the Yi River, which flows east into the Luo. The mountain harbors the Mafu, a beast with a human face set on a tiger's body. Its voice is that of a crying infant, and it eats people: the helpless sound draws would-be rescuers within reach of the claws.
The infant-cry lure is a recurring device among the man-eaters of the Shanhaijing. The nine-tailed fox of Mount Qingqiu in the southern mountains wails like a baby and devours people, and the Xiqu, an ox-shaped man-eater of the same Yi-Luo basin, uses the identical call.
Human-faced beasts form their own lineage in the book. Lu Wu, warden of Kunlun, bears a tiger's body, nine tails, a human face and tiger claws; the Kaiming beast guarding Kunlun's gates carries nine human faces. The Mafu holds no such office. It simply hunts at the source of the Yi.
