Ox-Shaped Man-Eater with a Dark Hide and an Infant's Cry
Mount Li bears jade on its sunny slope and madder on its shaded one; the Yongyong River flows from it south into the Yi. Its beast is the Xiqu: shaped like an ox, its whole body a dark blue-grey, its voice the wail of an infant. It eats people, and the cry is what brings them close.
The infant-cry trick recurs among the classic's man-eaters. The Mafu of the same Yi-Luo basin, human-faced and tiger-bodied, sounds like a baby, and so does the nine-tailed fox of Mount Qingqiu far to the south. Beside such composites the Xiqu looks almost ordinary — an ox, but for the strange color of its hide.
In pre-Qin usage the same word 'xiqu' also names a great shield of rhinoceros hide: the Discourses of the States describes warriors of Wu 'bearing bucklers of patterned rhinoceros,' with the commentator Wei Zhao glossing qu as 'shield.' The ancients counted the rhinoceros among the great horned cattle, and beast and buckler share the name for the same toughness.
