THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Mount Zhang'e, says the 'Classic of the Western Mountains', bears no plants but abounds in fine jade, and 'strange things happen there'. Among them prowls the Zheng: 'shaped like a scarlet leopard, with five tails and a single horn, its voice like the striking of stones.'
The Shanhaijing habitually marks its beasts by adding or subtracting body parts, and the Zheng — one horn, five tails — belongs to the same figural grammar as the one-eyed, three-tailed Huan and the three-headed, six-tailed Qitu elsewhere in the same classic. It shares Mount Zhang'e with the Bifang, the one-legged bird of fire omens, yet the text assigns the Zheng itself no omen, no cure, and no use — an unusual silence in a book where most western beasts either portend drought and flood or heal ills when eaten or worn. Ming and Qing illustrated editions draw it as a five-tailed, horned leopard poised on bare rock, an image that has passed into modern bestiaries, games, and illustration.
