Every Monster from Chinese Mythology Explained

Sun Wukong Sun Wukong is the Monkey King, a magical monkey born from a stone. And if he sounds familiar, there is a reason. Goku from Dragon Ball was directly inspired by him. Even the Japanese name, Sun Goku, comes from Sun Wukong. The similarities are everywhere. Sun Wukong carries a magical staff that can grow or shrink. Goku originally carried an extending staff too. Wukong travels through the sky on a magical cloud. Goku had the flying nimbus. And more recently, Sun Wukong became globally recognizable again through Black Myth. Wukong, a game built around Journey to the West. The original Wukong is ridiculously powerful. He knows 72 transformations, and can turn himself into animals, people, and objects. He can pull hairs from his body, blow on them, and turn them into copies of himself. His staff can become enormous during a fight, and then shrink small enough to store inside his ear. He also becomes almost impossible to kill. He eats magical peaches, drinks heavenly wine, swallows immortality pills. Heaven tries to execute him and fails. They even throw him into a magical furnace. He survives that too. Buddha finally stops him. Wukong believes he can jump beyond Buddha's hand. He flies an enormous distance, finds five giant pillars, marks one, and returns. The pillars were Buddha's fingers. Buddha traps him beneath a mountain for 500 years. The character who later inspired Goku was basically too powerful for Heaven to execute. The Chinese Dragon The Chinese Dragon is very different from the dragon most Western audiences imagine. It usually has a long, snake-like body. It does not need giant wings to fly. And instead of sitting inside a cave breathing fire, Chinese dragons are strongly connected with water, rain, rivers, lakes, clouds, and the sea. If you have seen Shenron from Dragon Ball, you already know the basic silhouette. A huge, long-bodied dragon moving through the sky instead of a heavy, four-legged animal with giant wings. In Chinese tradition, dragons could bring rain to farmland. That made them extremely important. A village could survive because the dragon brought enough rain for the crops. But the same control over water could also mean floods or drought. People performed rituals asking dragons for rain. And the traditional dragon dance itself has historical connections with praying for rain. Some stories describe dragon kings ruling enormous underwater palaces. One of the most famous is the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. Sun Wukong visits his underwater palace looking for a weapon. He tries several weapons and complains that they are too light. Then he finds a giant magical iron pillar used to measure or control the sea. Wukong picks it up. That pillar becomes his famous staff. So one of the most recognizable weapons in Chinese mythology originally belonged inside the palace of a dragon under the ocean. The Nine-Tailed Fox The Nine-Tailed Fox is one of those monsters you have probably seen before without knowing where it came from. Pokemon has nine tails. Naruto has the Nine-Tailed Fox. Nine-tailed foxes appear constantly in anime, games, and fantasy. But the creature has very old roots in Chinese mythology before spreading into other East Asian traditions. Chinese fox spirits are often called Huli Jing. A fox could live long enough to gain supernatural abilities. It could become smarter, learn magic, and eventually transform into a human. That is what made the creature dangerous. You might not see a giant fox with nine tails standing outside your house. You might see a normal-looking person. Fox spirits could disguise themselves as beautiful women, men, elderly people, or other humans. Some stories describe them living among people for years. They could create illusions and manipulate what someone believed they were seeing. The nine-tailed version represents an especially powerful fox. One famous later story connects a fox spirit with Daji, a woman close to the last king of the Shang Dynasty. In supernatural versions of the story, a fox takes Daji's form and enters the royal court. The king thinks he is listening to a beautiful woman. He is actually being influenced by a monster hiding inside the palace. The nine tails are the part everyone remembers, but the dangerous ability was hiding all nine of them. Jiang Shi The Jiang Shi is basically the famous Chinese hopping corpse. If you have ever seen an Asian zombie moving with both arms stretched forward and a piece of paper stuck to its forehead, this is probably what you were looking at. The word roughly means stiff corpse, and the stiffness explains why it hops. The body is supposedly too rigid to bend its knees and walk normally. So it jumps forward with its arms extended. The famous paper hanging from its forehead is a magical talisman. In popular versions of the legend, placing the correct talisman on the corpse can stop it. If the paper comes off, the corpse starts moving again. Jiang Shi are often compared with vampires, but traditionally they are more interested in a person's life energy or qi than blood. They usually appear at night and hide during the day. And the slow-hopping version is not always the strongest one. Older or more powerful Jiang Shi can run or even fly in some traditions. There may also be a real-life image behind part of the legend. Bodies of workers who died far from home were sometimes transported back for burial. Accounts describe corpses being attached to flexible bamboo poles. As the carriers walked, the poles bounced. From a distance, the dead bodies appeared to move up and down together. Imagine seeing that on a road at night without knowing there were people carrying them. Hungry Ghosts Hungry ghosts are dead people trapped with a hunger they can never satisfy. Their bodies are often shown extremely thin. Their stomachs are huge, but their mouths and throats are tiny. So they can desperately want food and still be unable to eat enough. Some descriptions say the throat is as thin as a needle. Others say food becomes impossible to swallow. The result is the same. They are always hungry. Hungry ghosts are especially connected with the 7th lunar month. During the Hungry Ghost Festival, people make offerings for ancestors and wandering spirits believed to be moving among the living. And this creates a very different way of dealing with a monster. You do not hunt it, you feed it. Food can be left outside. Incense can be burned. Other offerings can be made for spirits who have nobody else caring for them. The scary version is the ghost nobody remembers. No family. No offerings. No food. It wanders around looking for something it can never get enough of. The design is almost perfect for explaining the punishment. Huge stomach. Always hungry. Tiny throat. Can never fix the hunger. Nian Nian is the monster popularly connected with Chinese New Year. The story says Nian spends most of the year hidden in the mountains or beneath the sea. Then, once every year, it comes to the villages. It attacks livestock, destroys food, and in popular versions, attacks people. So villagers leave before it arrives. Then, they discover something useful. Nian has three extremely convenient weaknesses. It hates loud noises. It fears fire. And it is frightened by the color red. The next time Nian arrives, the village looks completely different. Red decorations are placed around houses. People create explosions and loud noises. Firecrackers go off. Instead of attacking, the monster runs away. That story became a popular explanation for some of the most recognizable parts of Chinese New Year celebrations. There is an important detail, though. The monster story appears relatively late in surviving written records. So it probably did not literally create every New Year tradition. But for a modern audience, Nian gives all those traditions one extremely easy story. Why red? Monster hates red. Why fireworks? Monster hates noise. Why repeat it every year? Because Nian comes back every year. Taodi Taodi is basically a monster built around one idea. Eating too much. It became associated with extreme greed and gluttony. But what makes Taodi interesting is that you can actually see its face on ancient Chinese objects. Bronze containers made thousands of years ago were decorated with strange animal masks. The most recognizable feature is usually a pair of enormous eyes. Then you start seeing horns, jaws, fangs, and shapes that look like parts of an animal spreading outward from the face. Later traditions called this creature Taodi. And the monster became connected with an appetite that never stops. That fits the design surprisingly well. Sometimes the face is so dominant that the creature almost looks like nothing but eyes and a mouth. A monster reduced to the parts it needs to find food and eat it. Taodi also became one of the four perils. Four dangerous beings associated with destructive behavior. But unlike a dragon or giant snake, there is no one famous story where Taodi chases a hero through a forest. Its strongest nugget is physical. People were putting this monster's giant face directly onto valuable ritual bronze vessels. You could literally pour food or drink from an object decorated with a monster. Famous for consuming too much, Xiangliu. Xiangliu is a giant snake with nine heads. And unlike a normal multi-headed monster, killing it does not immediately solve the problem. All nine heads can eat. The creature is connected with floods and poisoned water. Where Xiangliu moves, the land can become swampy and contaminated. Water becomes bitter. Plants stop growing. Animals cannot live normally. So even if Xiangliu never catches you, simply having the monster near your home can destroy the area you depend on. That makes it easy to compare with the Greek Hydra. Hydra has multiple heads. Xiangliu has nine. But Xiangliu's nastiest ability is what happens to the environment. You the Great eventually kills the monster. Then Xiangliu creates one final problem. Its blood is so poisonous that the ground becomes unusable. The hero has defeated the giant snake. But now the place where it died is contaminated. That is the nugget. Alive, Xiangliu poisons the land. Dead, Xiangliu still poisons the land. Most monsters become less dangerous after you kill them. This one can lose the fight and still ruin the battlefield. The White Bone Demon is a shape-shifting monster from Journey to the West. Her real form is basically a skeleton. But that is almost never the form her victims see. Her target is Tang Sanzang. The monk Sun Wukong has been ordered to protect. She first appears as a young woman carrying food. Tang Sanzang sees an innocent villager. Sun Wukong immediately realizes she is a demon. He attacks her. But the demon escapes and leaves the fake body behind. Now everybody thinks Wukong just attacked a normal woman. So the demon tries again. She returns disguised as the woman's elderly mother. Wukong sees through that disguise too. Then she comes back again, this time as another elderly member of the same supposed family. Every time Wukong attacks, the demon makes him look more violent. Eventually he kills the actual monster. But Tang Sanzang still believes Wukong has been attacking innocent people and sends him away. That is what makes the White Bone Demon clever. She cannot beat the Monkey King in a normal fight. So she makes his biggest advantage useless. Wukong is the only person who can see the monster. And that is exactly why nobody believes him. Zhulong is the Torch Dragon. He has the body of an enormous red serpent or dragon and a human-like face. And his body controls things that normally have nothing to do with monsters. When Zhulong opens his eyes, it becomes day. When he closes them, it becomes night. One description says that when he blows, winter arrives. When he calls out, summer comes. If he breathes normally, huge winds can appear. He does not need to eat or drink. And some descriptions make his body around a thousand lai long. That makes Zhulong less like a dragon hiding in a cave and more like part of the world itself. You cannot just stab him and go home. Closing his eyes changes the sky. Breathing changes the weather. The name Torch Dragon comes from his connection with light. He is also described as illuminating distant northern places that normal sunlight does not reach. The easiest way to imagine him is almost like a living control panel for nature. Eyes open, daylight. Eyes closed, darkness. One action, winter. Another, summer. If a normal Chinese dragon can control the rain around your village, Zhulong operates on a completely different scale. He can change what the entire world around you feels like just by moving his face.