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Everyone knows the Chinese dragon, the phoenix, the nine-tailed fox. Almost nobody knows what the Shan Hai Jing actually says about them. The nine-tailed fox is not a charming spirit guide. It is a man-eater. The phoenix does not rise from flames - it simply appears when the world is in harmony and vanishes when it is not. The Qilin is so gentle it refuses to step on living grass, yet its appearance announces that someone extraordinary is about to be born or die. These are the creatures whose appearance changes everything - and their original descriptions are far stranger than the versions that survived into popular culture.