I · 狗民国 The Dog-Headed People

原文：

狗民国，人身犬首，长毛不衣，语若犬吠。其妻皆人，好啖蛇肉。

In the land of the Dog-Headed People, their bodies are human but their heads are those of dogs. They are covered in long fur and wear no clothes. Their speech sounds like barking. Their wives are human women, and they are fond of eating snake meat.

This is one of many "foreign peoples" (异人) described in Chinese bestiaries — races that live at the margins of the known world, where the boundary between human and animal dissolves. The Dog-Headed People are not presented as monstrous, merely different: a variation on the theme of being human.

文化注释 Cultural Note The concept of dog-headed peoples (狗头人) appears in many ancient cultures — from the Cynocephali of Greek and Roman texts to the Norse myth of the Hyperboreans. In China, these peoples were typically placed in the remote west or south, beyond the reach of imperial geography. They were part of a broader taxonomy of difference that the Shanhaijing systematized and Zhang Hua inherited.

II · 穿胸国 The Pierced-Chest People

原文：

穿胸国，其人胸有窍，以木贯之，可抬而行。

In the land of the Pierced-Chest People, each person has a hole through their chest. They pass a wooden pole through it and are carried about like sedan chairs.

A surreal image — human beings as palanquins, their bodies structured around an absence. The pierced chest is both wound and feature, a modification that redefines the human form.

文化注释 Cultural Note The 穿胸国 appears in the Shanhaijing and is referenced in numerous later texts. Some scholars have interpreted the "pierced chest" as a description of body modification practices or ritual scarification. Others see it as pure fantasy — a thought experiment about what the human body might become. The image resonated deeply: it appears in Han dynasty tomb art and in later illustrated editions of the Shanhaijing.

III · 轩辕国 The Land of Xuanyuan

原文：

轩辕国在穷山之际，其不寿者八百岁。人面蛇身，尾交首上。

The Land of Xuanyuan lies at the edge of the Endless Mountains. Even its short-lived citizens live to eight hundred years. They have human faces and serpent bodies, with tails that curl over their heads.

Xuanyuan is the name of the Yellow Emperor — and placing an immortal race under his name suggests that the boundary between mythology and history was, for Zhang Hua, porous. These are not aliens; they are ancestors, transformed by distance and time into something wondrous.

文化注释 Cultural Note 轩辕 (Xuanyuan) is the personal name of the Yellow Emperor (黄帝), the legendary progenitor of Chinese civilization. By associating this immortal race with Xuanyuan, Zhang Hua blurs the line between ethnography and mythology. The "human face, serpent body" (人面蛇身) is the form of many primordial deities in Chinese myth, including Nüwa and Fuxi — suggesting that these distant peoples are echoes of the gods themselves.

IV · 女人国 The Land of Women

原文：

女人国，无男子。入池浴，即有孕。生女不生男。

In the Land of Women there are no men. When the women bathe in the pool, they become pregnant. They bear only daughters, never sons.

A self-sustaining female society — no men needed, reproduction achieved through water. The image appears in multiple Chinese sources and has been read variously as a matriarchal utopia, a cautionary tale about disorder, or simply a playful inversion of the patriarchal norm.

文化注释 Cultural Note The 女人国 (Land of Women) appears in the Liang Shu, the Tongdian, and in later maritime accounts. Some scholars link it to actual matriarchal societies in Southeast Asia; others see it as a literary trope. The "conception through bathing" motif is remarkably persistent — it appears in accounts of Japan's female shamans and in Tibetan legends of lake-birth. Zhang Hua records it without judgment, as befits an encyclopedist.

V · 长臂国 The Long-Armed People

原文：

长臂国，其人臂长三丈，捕鱼水中，不假舟楫。

In the Land of the Long-Armed, the people's arms measure thirty feet. They catch fish in the water without needing boats or oars.

A pragmatic fantasy — arms long enough to fish from the shore, eliminating the need for technology. The Long-Armed People are adapted to their environment in a way that makes tools redundant, a biological solution to an engineering problem.