介绍:
Adopted from phenomenal online fictions, "Ghost Blows Out: The Nine-story Demon Tower" is award-winning director Lu Chuan's first adventure thriller. Featuring a group of explorers searching for an unknown culture, this special-effect-loaded film is severely mauled for its poor plot, but wins nods for its mystique and ferocious creatures being shown, which may remind you of wargs and fire-drakes from The Lord of the Rings.
But few people know that the ideas of those beasts come from the ancient Chinese scripture "Classic of Mountains and Seas", or widely known as "Shan Hai Jing", the Book of Monsters in the eyes of many.
However, Dr. Huang Yue, a researcher in mythology at Beijing Language and Culture University, voices her retort.
"'Shan Hai Jing' is a strange book. However, since it is named as one of the classics, it proves that ancient Chinese treated it quite seriously. Accordingly, when Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty ruled during the 2nd century BC, someone offered him an eccentric bird. No one could recognise it except for the royal consultant Dongfang Shuo, who claimed to find the answer from this book. In ancient times, people believed that if you want to become erudite, you could learn a lot from Shan Hai Jing. "
Although the authorship and the date of writing remain undetermined, this classic is generally believed to be more than two thousand years old. The surviving script contains 18 chapters, compiling massive information on strange realms, vast wilderness and their inhabitants. Unlike medieval bestiary in Europe, Classic of Mountains and Seas is more like a geographical gazetteer of primitive China, as it exhaustively introduces over 500 mountains and 300 rivers with an ethnographic account.
According to Gu Jun, professor of sociology at Shanghai University, no matter accurate or not, the book was regarded as an authentic record of geography in ancient times, since it provides a fully-fledged panorama of a mysterious land.
"If the author lived to this day, he probably would argue about intellectual property issue with Google Map. It seems that the writer knew every nook and cranny of China."
Flipping through pages, readers will be drawn into a world that is equally complicated and wondrous as Narnia or Middle Earth. Embarking on this fascinating and intriguing journey, you will encounter some of the most offbeat flora and fauna, such as tigers with human faces, nine-tail foxes, people with a hole in their chests, and ephemeral herbs.
One of the most striking stories is about how goddess Xi He, mother of the Sun, gives bath of her ten children in the sea and then hangs them dry on a tree.
Here is Gu Jun again.
"Whoever reads this story will fathom the image of the Sun rising over the ocean. Why not bathing in the mountains? Because the sky already gets bright when the Sun rises over the mountain. But by the sea, you will witness how the morning glow tinges pink the water first and then the Sun comes out. In the book, this transformation from dark to bright is described as a mother bathing her sons. That's why we should read myths. I have to wonder if we are still equipped with such rich imagination like our ancestors. "
But please be aware that "Classic of Mountains and Seas" is not merely a romantic catalogue of supernatural beings, but most likely a magnifier of Chinese earliest world outlook.
Gu Jun elaborates.
"The book's significance lays with its demonstration of the mental structure of Chinese people. It's invisible, but you could find traces of many practices in later ages. For example, why did goddess Nvwa create two kinds of human? According to Christian doctrine, God created Adam and Eve and all their offsprings as equal. But Nvwa created humankind in two different ways, which may affect our political system to a certain extent. That's why we separated people into gentleman and flunky, those living by mental perplexity and those living by labor."
Though for today's readers, some parts of Classic of Mountains and Seas appear to be overly obscure, researcher Huang Yue says it is still a book worth reading.
"Why is mythology so important? Why did every dynasty have their own interpretation of it? Because it always tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions, such as where do we come from, where should we go and how to figure out our relation with the world."
So please be prepared to get lost into this whimsical world, since myth is always "more potent than history" and displays "a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine".
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