The Fifth Son Of The Loong king

In ancient China, there was a book called *Shan Hai Jing* (*The Classic of Mountains and Seas*).

This is an ancient text, a compilation of Chinese mythological geography, cosmology, and folklore. It describes a variety of magnificent and mysterious ancient Chinese creatures, which have inspired countless readers throughout history, leading them to create even more astonishing works based on *Shan Hai Jing*.

Today, as Chinese culture gains increasing recognition and importance around the world, this ancient text, which to some extent represents Chinese mythology, has once again been carefully revisited.

And today, the creature we are going to talk about comes from within its pages.

Taotie, whose existence can be traced back even earlier than *Shan Hai Jing*, became widely known thanks to this ancient text.

There are at least three versions of its origin. The most famous one naturally comes from the description in *Shan Hai Jing*.

In the *Classic of Northern Mountains* within *Shan Hai Jing*, Taotie is depicted as a fierce beast with the body of a sheep, the face of a human, and eyes under its armpits.

It was born in the Northern Mountains and symbolizes greed and gluttony.

It is often mentioned alongside the other three great malevolent beasts of ancient China, collectively known as the “Four Great Malevolent Beasts.”

However, Taotie has another widely spread origin.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), another great work emerged: *Sheng’an Waiji* (*Outer Collection of Sheng’an*), which documented the nine sons of the Chinese dragon.

The saying "the dragon has nine sons, each different" comes from this book.

In its records, Taotie is the fifth child of the Dragon King.

In this version, Taotie is a divine beast that devours all the suffering and misery in the human world.

It consumed all the world's bitterness, bringing temporary peace to this less-than-perfect world.

Unfortunately, this peace was short-lived.

Even in this book, Taotie came to represent an insatiable desire for gluttony.

But as a living creature, it couldn’t stop eating just because "all the food was in its belly."

Eventually, starving and desperate, Taotie turned its gaze to the only source of food left—its own stomach.

Ravenous, it tore apart its own body, gaining temporary satisfaction.

However, since Taotie's stomach was filled with all the world's negative emotions and disasters, once its body was torn apart, these vast negative emotions, with no place to be contained, scattered back into the world like wild beasts escaping their cage.

Even worse, without its body, Taotie could no longer store the calamities, even if it consumed them again.

From that point on, both Taotie and the world were trapped in a bizarre, cyclical nightmare.

Taotie endlessly devoured suffering, but without a body to hold it, the suffering scattered once more, while Taotie’s hunger grew more unbearable.

Over time, in this version of the myth, Taotie also became a symbol of greed and gluttony. In fact, whether it devoured its own body out of biological instinct or sheer gluttony has become unclear.

But in any case, Taotie has undeniably become an integral part of Chinese civilization. The giant bronze cauldrons unearthed from the Shang Dynasty, engraved with Taotie motifs, and the latest artifacts with Taotie patterns unearthed at Sanxingdui all tell the story of China’s long and profound history, instilling confidence in the Chinese people.

At the same time, it has also made an indelible contribution to the development of human spiritual civilization!Start writing...