THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
On Mount Ku lives the Shangao, 'shaped like a pig, red as cinnabar fire, and fond of cursing.' The graph in the received text reads zhu, which Guo Pu's commentary takes as tun, a pig: a swine burning crimson from snout to tail whose one recorded talent is abuse.
The classic catalogues hundreds of beasts by shape, call and omen; almost none is granted a temperament. The word li, 'to revile,' occurs in the book only in this line, which makes the red pig the sole creature in the Shanhaijing that scolds people. The text never says what it curses, or at whom. On the same mountain grows the huangji tree, with yellow blossoms, round leaves and orchid-like fruit; a woman who eats of it bears no children.
In the neighboring hills of the same seventh sequence, Mount Fanggao keeps the Wenwen, a bee-shaped beast given to loud cries — one shouts, one swears, two noisy neighbors among the central mountains.
