I remember when I was a child, once when my sister came back from outside, she told me that she was very scared, and I said that when she was in the canal, she saw a sheep, I couldn't laugh, I also saw sheep! She hastened to say that she wanted to observe the sheep, but when she looked at the sheep, it actually stared at herself, and its eyes were cold and hateful.
I thought she was very timid, so I laughed even harder, and I often laughed at her with this matter since then. I was the most daring child in the house, and there was a woman in the empty courtyard of the neighbor's house who drank medicine and left, and as soon as the night passed there, the playmates sped up their pace, and said that they were afraid when they remembered the way she lay, and I also went to see it, but I was not afraid. I felt like I just had some sympathy for her, she was still young, but I didn't think to be afraid.
After that, for a long time after going out at night, they all loved to pull me up, and my sister was the same, as long as the Buddha was there, they would be extremely relieved. And I, who have always been very open in my heart, feel that the real hateful person is the person who made her drink medicine, why should we be afraid of her? She's a victim too! What would come to mind with her eyes closed, I think it was really inexplicable, why would they think of a poor man so terrible?
Cover of the Classic of Mountains and Seas
So, I think my sister would imagine a sheep as a human face, cold eyes, with hatred, which is really ridiculous, maybe she imagined it as the victim. It wasn't until I read the Classic of Mountains and Seas that I felt ridiculous because there were a lot of human-faced animals in it.
For example, the "huai", which looks very much like a person, says that wherever it appears, the people there will be the scourge of labor. There is also "Qu Ru", which has a human-like face and calls out as if it were calling its own name.
This is not to say that the Classic of Mountains and Seas is true, and the records and records in this book may not be completely true, because during that period, some information was also preserved by word of mouth, and the increase and decrease of information and the completeness may not be so good. Moreover, over time, whether it is land or species, many changes have taken place. Take the specific mountains, some can be roughly inferred where they are now, and some cannot be verified. Therefore, the situation of animals should be roughly the same.
However, I just think that these records are not accidental, because many cultures have human faces, what "sphinx", what "mermaid"...
Sloppy
It's just that our current understanding can't explain these things, so we think these are ridiculous, and if we can understand it clearly one day, it may not be laughable. Just as science has not been able to explain the origin of "dreams" so far. Dreams have a warning effect in some cases, or dreams occur first and reality lags behind.
When I was in middle school, I once had a dream, I walked west along the road, came to a place, many people around a package, the package has a very beautiful face, the eyes are also open, long hair, is a young woman, but the face is all around her limbs, not connected to her beautiful face. They were all in the package, scattered like some exquisite object...
When I woke up, I still remember her face clearly, and I thought about what it meant, and I wrote it in my diary, but I still don't have the answer.
Let's talk about the idiom of "human-faced beast heart", which probably refers to the ferocity of a person's heart like an animal, right? This statement comes from the Warring States period, when people associated some characteristics of man and beast, which often made me wonder, this is how we look at beasts, how do we look at animals, so what do we think of animals?
Qu Ru
Especially when I see some animal performances, I think what is the relationship between those animal trainers and animals?
Animals listen to them, interact with them, cooperate, perhaps do things they don't like against their will, occasionally get beaten or punished...
How did they see us at that time?
Don't we also have such and such relationships between people? There is also obedience, interaction, cooperation... All kinds of things?
So sometimes, I think if there is really a species that is a "human-faced beast heart", it should be ourselves, right? In other words, there is nothing special about the human face, and in a big concept, this is not special at all, just like the flowers and trees in this world. It is not imitated or compared, and like the existence of all things, it is a very objective thing.
Therefore, I will feel that the ridiculous things when I was a child grow up to be unproductive, and the things that were not laughable when I was a child feel ridiculous when I grow up!
Hopefully, the Classic of Mountains and Seas is not a magnificent and fantastical imagination, but a real existence, so that we have another reason to explore what we don't know, but perhaps for some people, exploration itself does not need a reason.
I heard that an American woman studied the Classic of Mountains and Seas very thoroughly, and she thought that everything in this book was well-founded and verifiable, but there were still some changes in the world now and the world at that time, and some things had been transformed.
Who says it's not! The world is changing with each passing day!