The collection

All stories

A field guide to the extraordinary, rooted in its sources.

Enter the Shan Hai Jing, where routes, plants, minerals and extraordinary beings form a remarkable map of an imagined world.

Discover how the fifteenth night of the eighth lunar month brings moon stories, shared food and wishes for reunion together.

Inside an egg-like chaos, Pangu grows with the world. Follow the transmitted accounts without confusing them with a single canon.

An elixir carries Chang’e to the moon, but different tellings give very different meanings to her departure from earth.

Discover the qilin’s changing appearance, its legendary connection with Confucius, and the gentleness beneath its formidable shape.

A magnificent bird of virtue and harmony, the fenghuang has a history quite distinct from the phoenix of rebirth.

Read the sky-repair myth and discover why Nüwa’s creation of people should be treated as a related, separate tradition.

Meet the long, a changing creature of clouds and water whose meanings stretch from rainmaking to imperial art.