THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: West devotes barely two dozen characters to him: Xingtian contended with the Supreme God for divinity; the god cut off his head and buried it on Mount Changyang; whereupon Xingtian made his nipples into eyes and his navel into a mouth, and danced brandishing shield and battle-axe. Early commentators often identify his opponent as the Yellow Emperor. The headless trunk never falls: it keeps swinging its weapons at an enemy it can no longer see.
The name itself reads like a sentence passed on the loser, roughly 'punished by Heaven' or 'the severed head'. The poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) fixed the figure's meaning for all later ages in his cycle 'On Reading the Shanhaijing': 'Xingtian dances with shield and axe; his fierce resolve endures forever.' Paired ever since with the sea-filling bird Jingwei as an emblem of defiance beyond defeat, Xingtian remains a stock figure in modern Chinese fiction, comics, and games.
