XingWu🐉ChineseFolklore
@xingwu.bsky.social
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@x1ngwu on X. I collect, translate and write about ancient Chinese folklore, mythology, and history. Love books and cats. Mythology | Yaoguai(妖怪) | Ghost(鬼) | Art | Myth | Fantasy | History
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🦋 Folklore-related tags on Bluesky, along with their hosts—already active on the platform—who run weekly themes:

#MythologyMonday
#FairyTaleTuesday
#LegendaryWednesday
#WyrdWednesday
#BOOKOLOGYTHURSDAY
#FolkyFriday
#BookWormSat
#FolkloreSunday
#BookChatWeekly

Please see their accounts below 👇
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bronze vessels and jade artifacts. The Kuilong Pattern Agate Bi embodies this tradition, its swirling design not just ornamental but mythic. 2/2
📷 夔龍紋瑪瑙璧, Western Jin Period (266–316 CE)
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Kuilong, a one-footed dragon-like creature, dances through early Chinese mythology and art with quiet power.
Unlike typical dragons, its lone foot marks it as otherworldly, a symbol of imbalance made sacred. This unique form appears in ancient decorative motifs, especially on 1/2
📷 动脉影
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fluid as the subject itself. Each panel whispers a different mood: spring’s glimmer, autumn’s hush, winter’s frozen breath. 2/2
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🎨 Twelve Shapes of Water by Ma Yuan of the Southern Song Dynasty captures water not as a single form, but as a living rhythm. Across twelve scenes tied to shifting seasons and distant regions, Ma Yuan paints ripples, currents, and stillness with brushwork as 1/2
#art #painting
He abandoned the traditional fish-scale painting technique and extensively used an improved net-pattern method, employing lines to validate the artistic conception of 'water's ever-changing form' and 'emptiness leaving traces more compelling than visible marks.'
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clothed in subtle fragrance, while a child in green danced beside her. At dawn, he woke beneath a blooming plum tree, its boughs teeming with kingfishers. The dream unraveled: the woman was the plum spirit, the child her feathered companion. 2/2
🎨 Tao Lengyue, 1895-1985
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Among ancient Chinese literati, admiring plum blossoms was more than pastime. It was poetry in practice.
In Tang Dynasty #folklore, a tale from the Sui era captures this reverence. Zhao Shixiong, visiting Fuluo Mountain, dreamt of drinking wine with a graceful woman 1/2
#folklore #painting
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Neither ghost nor beast, Kang Nang lures with innocence and dies from dislocation. 2/2
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Kang Nang (傒囊) is a haunting presence in Chinese folklore, a mountain-dwelling creature that looks like a child. When spotted, it silently extends its hand, inviting you closer. But beware: if you grasp its hand and lead it away from where it stands, it dies. 1/2
🎨 Shan Ze
 干寶,搜神記十二,"兩山之間,其精如小兒,見人,則伸手欲引人,名曰「傒囊」,引去故地,則死。"
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undeterred, unyielding.
In Chinese #mythology, Xing Tian isn’t just a warrior, he’s the embodiment of unbreakable will, a symbol of rebellion that refuses to die, even when silenced. 2/2
🎨 Xing Tian, by Shanze
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Xing Tian (刑天) is defiance made flesh. In Shanhaijing, he challenges the Yellow Emperor and loses his head. But death doesn’t claim him. Headless, he rises again, eyes burning in his chest, a mouth roaring from his navel. With axe and shield, he continues the fight, 1/2
#mythology
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sinological gem breathes life into the plants, insects, and animals woven into its verses. Through careful illustration and commentary, it bridges poetry and natural history, revealing how ancient imagery mirrored lived experience. 2/2
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The Illustrated Study of the Creatures in the Mao Edition of the Book of Songs (《毛詩品物圖考》), compiled by Okamoto Genpō with illustrations by Tachibana Kunio, is an 18th-century Japanese tribute to Chinese antiquity.
Drawing from the Shijing, China’s earliest poetic canon, this 1/2
#painting
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Pangu died, but from his body, the world was born: breath became wind, voice thunder, eyes the sun and moon. His blood flowed as rivers, bones formed mountains, and hair scattered into stars and forests.
In Chinese mythology, creation is a sacrifice etched into the land itself. 2/2
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In the beginning, all was chaos: a boundless mist without form. From this void rose Pangu, the giant who held heaven and earth apart with his own strength. For 18,000 years he grew, lifting the sky and anchoring the land until they stood 90,000 miles apart. When his task ended, 1/2
🎨 Lu Mingshan
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walk between realms.
In Chinese mythology, its flesh is said to guard against possession and enchantment. 2/2
🎨 巴普洛夫Pavlov
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In the mountains of Qingqiu roams a fox, not ordinary, but crowned with nine tails. As told in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, each tail marks a rise in spiritual power, splitting one by one until the creature becomes immortal. The Nine-Tailed Fox can spit fire, dazzle the mind, and1/2
#mythology
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on its own. That’s your fortune.” They admitted the cat weighed seven pounds. Hu nodded, “Then your wealth will last seven years.” And so it did. When the cat left, so did their riches. In these tales, fate doesn’t knock. It purrs at your door. 2/2
Source in ALT.
🎨 《猴貓圖》,易元吉,宋
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In Chinese #folklore, a cat or dog that enters your home uninvited and is kept, ushers in fortune. A fat cat? Even better.
The Yilin tells of Hu Hong, a famed diviner from Ningbo. When a wealthy family puzzled over their sudden luck, Hu Hong revealed the cause: “A cat came to you 1/2
#caturday
《異林》:寧波胡宏,精卜筮術。有一人家暴富,心疑之,宏為設卦曰:「家有狸奴走入室,筮其祥也。」曰:「然。」曰:「狸奴形必大,可稱之,得幾斤?」曰:「七斤許。」曰:「富及七載,狸奴當去。」及期,狸果去,家貧如初。
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death shadowed his royal gardens, yet strange crow-like birds descended, placing this plant upon the dead and they stirred back to life. 2/2
🎨 張秋桔, 1973
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In the mythic seas beyond China lies the Ancestral Continent (祖洲), said to rest in the East China Sea. There, a reed-like plant grows, tall, unassuming, yet divine. Place it over the dead within three days, and they rise again; consume it, and you live forever.
During Qin Shi Huang’s reign, 1/2
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from mud, symbols of purity amid struggle. Bamboo whispers strength and resilience nearby. John leans his head to Jesus’s left, James kneels in quiet devotion, yet the scene is wrapped in Chinese elegance. 2/2
🎨 《最後的晚餐圖》任懿芳
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Imagine the Last Supper reimagined in a Ming Dynasty courtyard: Christ at the center, not in Jerusalem, but beneath carved wooden beams and fluttering lucky clouds.
In this early 20th-century painting, Peter wears a flowing blue hanfu, seated on a three-legged stool beside lotus blooms rising 1/2
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Far from mere superstition, this tradition is a philosophical craft, once consulted by emperors and commoners alike. 2/2
📷 Fortune-tellers of the Late Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)
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The Suanming Xiansheng (算命先生), or fortune-teller, is a master of ancient Chinese destiny arts, blending I Ching wisdom, astrology, feng shui, and palmistry. With a glance at your birth date or face lines, they chart the unseen forces shaping your life: luck, fate, obstacles, and potential.
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Golden Crow (金烏), together embodying yin and yang, the eternal dance of moon and sun, stillness and fire.2/2