Tradition: Chinese mythology
Alternative names: Thoroughly-Odd, Qiongqi (窮奇)
Category: Cow
The Myth
Two hundred and sixty li west of the previous region stands Mount Gui. A strange beast is said to dwell on its heights, resembling an ox covered with the sharp needles of a porcupine. It is called Qiongqi and makes a sound like a howling dog.
Qiongqi is a man-eater. According to one tradition, it devours people who wear their long hair loose, a style associated with demons and shamans. Its victims are eaten beginning with the head, although another version says that it begins with the feet.
Qiongqi was later given a more human and historical identity. In the Zuo Zhuan, it was described as another incompetent son of a thearch, Lesser-Brilliance, in the same passage that also mentions Hundun. Like Hundun, Qiongqi later became a fierce deity during the Han period.
The Huainanzi gives another account of its origin, stating that Qiongqi was born from the wind of the Northern Desert. He was also one of twelve divine beings invoked during the official Grand Exorcism performed at the end of the lunar year in the imperial palace.
Despite his terrifying nature, Qiongqi had a beneficial aspect in this ritual: he consumed insect-poison.
Qiongqi appears again in another chapter of the Guideway to the Mountains and Seas, where he is described differently, this time as a tiger with wings.
A later work, the Guideway to Gods and Anomalies, gives Qiongqi an even more sinister character. There he is portrayed as a perverse creature that devours people who are loyal and trustworthy, while offering freshly killed meat to the wicked and rebellious.
Another version of the same tradition describes Qiongqi as having a human body and the head of a dog, again making a sound like a dog. Because of this form, the poet Guo Pu referred to him as a “divine dog.”
Sources
Strassberg, Richard E., ed. and trans. A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
