The Catalog of Strangeness
The Shanhaijing describes dozens of peoples living in distant lands, each defined by a distinctive physical trait:
The Long-Armed People (长臂国) have arms that reach the ground. The Long-Legged People (长股国) have legs three times normal length. The One-Eyed People (一目国) have a single eye in the center of their face. The Feathered People (羽民国) have feathers growing from their bodies and can fly short distances.
The text presents these descriptions with the same matter-of-fact tone it uses for everything. There is no indication that the author considers these peoples more or less real than the Chinese kingdoms at the center of the world.
Garbled Ethnography?
Some scholars argue that the Shanhaijing's foreign peoples preserve distorted accounts of real ethnic groups encountered through trade and exploration.
The Black-Skinned People (黑齿国, literally "Black-Tooth Country") might refer to Southeast Asian peoples who practiced tooth blackening — a real custom in parts of Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The "black teeth" were misinterpreted or exaggerated into "black skin" or "black-toothed people."
The Tattooed People (雕题国) clearly correspond to real tattooing cultures in southern China and Southeast Asia. Tattooing was widespread among non-Han peoples, and the Shanhaijing's description is plausible as a factual observation.
The Hairy People (毛民国) might refer to the Ainu of Japan or other peoples whose body hair was notably different from Han Chinese norms.
Pure Mythology?
Other descriptions resist any ethnographic interpretation. The Headless People (刑天国) who have faces on their chests are clearly mythological. The Three-Headed People are not plausible as garbled observation.
The most likely explanation is that the Shanhaijing contains both: real observations of foreign peoples, distorted by distance and retelling, mixed with purely mythological inventions. The text does not distinguish between the two because, for its authors, the distinction may not have existed.
The Center-Periphery Logic
The Shanhaijing's foreign peoples follow a consistent pattern: the farther from China, the stranger they become. Peoples near the borders are unusual but recognizably human. Peoples at the edges of the world are barely human at all.
This is not random. It reflects a cosmological principle: China is the center of civilization, and distance from the center correlates with distance from normality. This principle shaped Chinese attitudes toward foreign peoples for millennia — and its echoes can still be detected in contemporary Chinese discourse about the outside world.
Modern Readings
Contemporary Chinese artists and writers have found rich material in the Shanhaijing's peoples. They appear in video games, fantasy novels, and art installations. The appeal is partly aesthetic — the descriptions are vivid and strange — and partly philosophical. The Shanhaijing asks: what counts as human? Where does humanity end and monstrosity begin? These questions have not gotten easier to answer.