THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Mount Yanzi closes the fourth guideway of the western mountains. On it grow cinnabar trees 'with leaves like the paper mulberry and fruit the size of melons, red-rinded and black-veined', a fruit that cures jaundice and guards against fire; turtles abound on its southern slopes and jade on its northern; the River Tiao rises here and flows west to the sea over beds of whetstone.
Its beast and bird are both prodigies. The Shuhu has 'a horse's body with bird's wings, a human face and a snake's tail', and delights in picking people up and holding them aloft; the bird is owl-shaped with a human face, monkey-bodied and dog-tailed, calls its own name, and brings great drought to any town where it appears.
What made Yanzi immortal was Qu Yuan. In the Lisao the poet commands Xihe, charioteer of the sun, to slacken pace — 'gazing at Yanzi, do not press near' — for, as Wang Yi's commentary explains, Yanzi is the mountain into which the sun sets. Ever since, the name has meant sunset itself in literary Chinese, and 'the sun nearing Yanzi' still describes old age and closing days. Traditional geographers placed the mountain southwest of Tianshui in Gansu.
