Folk Cthulhu Horror: Why Is His Back Covered with Eyes?

💡 Introduction:
When people enter a temple to pay their respects, the first figure they usually see is the smiling Budai Monk. But if you stand in an empty hall and stare at him for thirty seconds, does that smile begin to feel a little too perfect, a little too uncanny? Behind this most familiar “auspicious symbol” there may be a hidden legend erased by official history, and at its core, a deeply unsettling form of Chinese-style Cthulhu horror.

The Native Origins of Song Jiang's Liangshan Military Group

I. When the Yellow River Captured the Ji

In medieval China, the state maintained ritual sacrifices to the Five Sacred Peaks, the Five Sacred Strongholds, and the Four Waterways. The Four Waterways were the Yangzi, the Yellow River, the Huai, and the Ji.

Among them, the Yellow River was always the most troublesome, for obvious geographic reasons. Seasonal flood zones had already begun to appear before the Five Dynasties. One hydrological danger of a Yellow River breach was that it could seize the channel of another river. In the Northern Song, the court, still able to control parts of the upper Yellow River basin, was constantly preoccupied with preventing the Yellow River from capturing the Huai and emptying into the sea by that route.

Nüqing: The Hidden Official Who Vanished from the Daoist Pantheon

The Daoist pantheon did not gradually form a complete system until the Northern Song. This process showed itself mainly in several ways. First, the final ranking of the highest Daoist deities was eventually fixed. Before that, the order among the Three Pure Ones, especially the relative honor given to Primordial Beginning Heavenly Worthy and the Supreme Lord Lao, had never truly stabilized. Second, the borrowing and absorption of Buddhist concepts became systematic. Ideas such as the underworld and the Eighteen Hells had already sunk deep into popular consciousness and were therefore incorporated into Daoism. Third, Daoism retained many gods of older worship, such as City Gods and Earth Gods. Fourth, the proportion and influence of popular gods, figures transmitted in the folk sphere and then absorbed into Daoism and granted divine status, grew ever larger: Lord Guan, Lü Dongbin, Wang Lingguan, Mazu, Zhang Sanfeng, and many others.

Supplement on the Grand Duke: There Are Two Jiang Ziyas in *Investiture of the Gods*, and One of Them Deifies Himself

Most people know Jiang Ziya from Investiture of the Gods. The influence of that novel has been so immense that even divine figures wholly invented within it, Hongjun Patriarch for example, were later posthumously elevated by some temples and given statues for worship. Xu Zhonglin’s prose is admittedly rather poor, assuming Xu Zhonglin really was the author, which is no more certain than it is for the Four Great Novels. The plot is full of holes, and as literature it falls short. Yet because the materials connected with the Chinese divine world are so vast, and because the author truly did put enormous labor into assembling them, later readers who began to infer and investigate discovered a wealth of details. In that respect, it is no less rewarding than reading Journey to the West through a scholarly lens.

Bao Liang

After the Song, Daoism’s immense and unruly pantheon began to take on stable shape. The Taiqing and Lingbao traditions, among others, compromised with one another, and under the influence of the Song imperial house the ranks of the immortals were gradually fixed. At the summit stood the Three Pure Ones, the Four Sovereigns, the King Father of the East, and the Queen Mother of the West.

The Queen Mother of the West had, so far as records tell us, more than twenty daughters. One of the younger ones was called Lady Taizhen. She married Wang Youzi, the True King of Xuandu Taizhen. Wang Youzi originally held what amounted to an enviable central-government post, but after mishandling some affair he was demoted to become Lord of the Eastern Peak. In that age Buddhism had not yet entered China, so there was still no King Yama and no Eighteen Hells. The Lord of the Eastern Peak, who governed the underworld and its passages to the unseen realm, was in fact a very promising office. Lady Taizhen moved with her husband’s change of post, and so came to be known as the Lady of the Eastern Peak. She bore a son of thoroughly bad reputation, the famous Third Son of Mount Tai. We will leave him aside for now.

Anqi Sheng

Xie Lingyun of the Eastern Jin once wrote a poem, “Climbing the Islet in Mid-River,” which includes these lines:

Long have I wearied of ranging through Jiangnan,
Yet in Jiangbei broad circuits still remain.
Cherishing the new, the paths grow winding;
Seeking the strange, the sights do not delay.
Tumbling waters rush and then cut straight;
A lone islet charms the middle stream.
Cloud and sun shine into one another;
Empty water and sky share one bright freshness.
Wondrous things show themselves, but none may prize them;
Truth lies hidden, and who can pass it on?
I imagine the bearing of Kunshan’s immortals,
Remote beyond all worldly ties.
Only then do I believe in the arts of Anqi,
By which one may fully nourish the years of life.

Family EDC/PSK Gear Checklist

Applicable household size: 1-3 family members
Intended duration of use: noted item by item where relevant

Items to keep in a single bag that can be grabbed at any time:

• One 45L backpack kept ready year-round; in the bedroom there is also a fully loaded 25L hiking pack.
• Identification documents, ID card, passport, and so on. Important household papers such as the property deed are usually stored together so they can be picked up quickly if necessary, though preserving life always comes first.
• A certain amount of cash, including some coins usable for coin phones and vending machines, plus bankbooks and tickets/cards. I keep one bank card and several hundred yuan in a Dolfin waterproof case every day.
• Emergency phone charger. I have two power banks with different ports for all handheld devices, one carried daily and one in the emergency bag, charged once a week. I am obsessive about this.
• Family photos, for contact in case of separation. I keep one family photo in my wallet.
• Contact notebook, with important phone numbers copied down in case the phone runs out of power or fails. A backup phone is essential. A Nokia 1100 is especially valuable and also has a flashlight function.
• Paper and oil-based marker, for leaving notes and keeping records.
• Flashlights, one ordinary and one hand-crank, plus batteries. I keep several light sources and recommend a daily-carry flashlight using AA batteries, a squeeze-charge flashlight, and an outdoor camping lamp.
• Radio, for receiving outside information, plus batteries. Mine is a Tecsun full-band model with hand-crank charging.
• Tissues, wet wipes, sanitary pads, which can also be useful for stopping bleeding.
• Aluminum foil, 1.5 x 2 meters, for heat insulation, warmth, and waterproofing. A large plastic sheet can serve as well.
• Several plastic bags, for handling garbage and waste, and for windproofing and waterproofing. I keep a small roll of food-storage bags.
• Whistle, for survival use. I recommend an aluminum-alloy emergency whistle as part of the everyday keychain, and outdoor packs usually have whistles too.
• Swiss Army knife. In addition to a genuine Swiss Army knife, counterfeits are a disaster when things matter, we also need a straight-blade knife and a multitool pliers set just in case.
• Road atlas.
• A few energy bars and one bottle of water. I use a 3L hydration bladder. At home it is a good habit to make sure kettles and dispensers always have backup water ready. This comes from being used to water outages.
• Special items for particular family members. For example, my bag also contains diapers and an unopened can of stage-two baby formula. Prepare according to the needs of the specific household.
• Home medical kit. The main point is to ensure sterile gauze, alcohol, common medicines, and adhesive bandages are available.

Stored food:

Transcript | Don't Let Sheep Queue for You

When preparing a TED talk, there is one especially clumsy method called the verbatim-script method: you write out exactly what you plan to say, including the colloquial parts, word for word, then rehearse it and revise it again and again. It works for people giving TED-style talks for the first time. You get half the result for twice the labor.

What follows is one of my own failed examples.

Don’t Let Sheep Queue for You (Transcript)