The One-Eyed, Human-Faced Leopard That Carries Its Own Tail
Danzhang Mountain, in the first guideway of the Northern Mountains, is bare of plants and trees. Its beast is the zhujian: the body of a leopard trailing an exceptionally long tail, with a human head, the ears of an ox, and a single eye in its face. The text notes that it is 'good at roaring' — its cry is loud and intimidating.
The most vivid detail concerns the tail: 'when it walks it carries its tail in its mouth; when it settles it coils its tail up.' The appendage is evidently long enough to drag and tangle, so the animal manages it the way a traveller manages a rope. Entries in the classic usually stop at an inventory of body parts; a note on habit and behaviour like this is rare, and it fixed the creature's image for later illustrators — in Ming and Qing woodblock editions the zhujian is almost always drawn glancing back with its tail in its teeth.
The text does not call it a man-eater, nor does it attach any omen to its appearance. Among the crowded roster of northern horrors, the zhujian is one of the few beasts that is merely strange to look at and loud to hear. The same mountain also hosts the baiye, a pheasant-like bird with a patterned head, white wings, and yellow feet, whose flesh was said to cure a sore throat.
