White-Eared Ape-Beast of Mount Zhaoyao
The xingxing lives on Mount Zhaoyao, the very first mountain of the Classic of the Southern Mountains, a peak rich in cassia, gold, and jade overlooking the Western Sea. The text describes it as shaped like the yu, a large macaque, but with white ears; it crawls on all fours yet can also rise and walk like a man. As the first strange beast to appear in the whole book, it comes with the book's characteristic prescription: eat its flesh and you will become a swift runner.
The half-human animal had a wider reputation in early texts. The Classic of Regions Within the Seas: South claims the xingxing knows people's names and can call a stranger by name on sight, while the Book of Rites cites it in the maxim 'the xingxing can speak, yet remains a beast', a caution that speech alone does not make one human. The name was later written with the characters now used for orangutans and gibbons, and commentators generally take some such ape as the creature's original: the white ears, the upright gait, and the gift of speech all read as close observation of an animal uncomfortably like ourselves.
