Yaoguai

Nine Tailed Fox, a supernatural creature regarded as a "yao"

Yaoguai (妖怪; yāoguài) are creatures with supernatural (or preternatural) abilities and strange qualities featured in Chinese literature, folktales, and mythology. These beings are often depicted as shapeshifters and enchanters. They possess powers beyond the ordinary, such as creating illusions, hypnosis, controlling minds, or draining life force. These creatures blur the boundaries between the natural and the unnatural, and their appearance in tales is often related to political portents or as a reflection of the cosmopolitical order. They typically dwell in remote areas or on the fringes of civilization, occasionally interacting with human life.

Pipa Jing, or the Pipa Fairy

In modern fantasy dramas, yaoguai is often translated as "demon" in English. However, unlike the European concept of demons with moral or theological implications, yaoguai are simply a category of creatures with supernatural (or preternatural) abilities. They are not inherently evil or wicked but may exhibit capricious or malevolent tendencies. Many of them are capable of falling in love with mortals and of exhibiting the full range of human emotions, desires and values.

Attributes and Powers

General attributes

A yao (妖, pinyin: yāo) is an eldritch and potentially predatory creature with uncanny properties, dwelling in remote wildernesses or at the fringes of civilization, and occasionally intruding into human civilization. Older references to the 妖 regard them as strange phenomena arising due to aberrations or anomalies in qi (the breath, energy or material force) pervading the natural world. Whatever could not be readily understood by the population and that frightened them was generally regarded as "妖". In folklore, their characteristic attributes include strangeness or otherworldliness, seductiveness, and an association with misfortune. They are not necessarily female, but the examples in mythology or literature are often femme fatales.

The surrender of Black Wind Demon, a "yaoguai"

In their capricious tendencies and powers, they have some resemblance to the fae of Irish legend or the fairies of European lore. However, unlike the fae, the "妖" often possess the nature of a specific kind of animal or a plant (a vixen, a snake, a butterfly, or a tree or a flower), which may have been their original form. They are capable of assuming human, or near-human form, and of wielding either innate supernatural powers or abilities associated with Taoist cultivation.

Typical powers

Descriptions of the abilities of these beings vary considerably. Typical powers ascribed to them include shapeshifting, the manufacture of illusions, mind control, clairvoyance, the possession of human beings, and the control over natural forces.

For example, nine-tailed foxes are said to be clairvoyant beings able to poison others through sorcery and to take possession of others. In Yue Jun's tale "Hu Hao Hao", a fox spirit compels, through sorcery, a respectable couple to engage in a sexual threesome with it. Baigujing, a white skeleton essence, is described as an adept shapeshifter, taking on the forms of multiple people in an attempt to deceive her opponents. Others are capable of control over elemental forces, as when Bai Suzhen, a white snake fairy unleashes a supernatural flood against a temple.

Origin

In philosophy, the existence of these creatures or phenomena associated with them is generally an ill-omen and is described arising due to natural fluctuations in yin and yang, or to human activity which disrupts the moral or normative order.

According to the classic text the Zuo Zhuan, "when people lack constancy then this causes the yao to emerge" ("人弃常则妖兴"). In traditional Chinese thought, natural phenomena and human wellbeing and flourishing are correlated to moral conduct. The operative principle can be moral or natural - either Heavenly retribution or the philosophical concept of gan-ying or stimulus-response (also known as "sympathetic resonance"). The latter is a broad connective principle according to which "like-begets-like", as when kindness begets kindness, thorns grow where armies are located, and where the musical analogy of resonating strings is often used.

In Wang Chong's 1st century text the Balanced Discussions, things such as animals, plants, and rocks are said to be endowed a human-like essence and capacities as a result of immense age ("物之老者，其精为人").

In mythology, Baigujing was once the exposed skeleton of a maiden who, having absorbed the energies of the sun and moon over a long time, transformed into a shape-shifting daemon. Bai Suzhen was a serpent who through the cultivation of magical power, attained to human form. Daji was a thousand-year-old fox spirit, who through immense age, had acquired supernatural powers.

Classical Examples and Types

Yaoguai are often the antagonists of "shenmo" ("gods and demons") and "zhiguai" ("records of the strange") genres of literature. Such famous yaoguai in Chinese mythology and literature include:

Seduction of Tang San Zang by female "daemons" or yaoguai

• Baigujing: literally, "white skeleton spirit", a shapeshifting demoness whose true form is a white skeleton, and who desires to eat the flesh of a holy man in order to obtain immortality.

• Niumowang: literally, "bull demon king"
• Bai Suzhen: a snake demoness that had managed to cultivate a human form, and who falls in love with a man named Xu Xian. Their love is repudiated by a monk, and she is ultimately trapped and sealed beneath a pagoda.
• Daji: the thousand-year-old "fox spirit" in Fengshen Yanyi who seduces the last king of Shang in order to precipitate the fall of his kingdom.
• Pipa Jing and Jiutou Zhiji Jing in Fengshen Yanyi, a magical pipa and a nine-headed pheasant who accompany Daji in her mission.
• Sun Wukong, sometimes called a "stone monkey demon"
• "Fox Spirit" in Yue Jun's Hu Hao Hao, who compels a couple to engage in a forbidden sex act.
• "Painted skin demon", featured in the Pu Song Ling's The Painted Skin, a ghastly green ghoul with serrated teeth wearing a mask of human skin.

Taoist folklore

In Taoist folklore, yaoguai come from "an imbalance in the" Tao and "any combination of [atypical] powers, including mind control, shapeshifting and the ability to create illusions."

Types

Predatory beings

Yaoguai are often depicted as predatory beings in Chinese folklore and literature, employing shapeshifting and transformation in order to drain the life force of living beings, as well as sometimes entering into romantic relationships with them.

One example is the tale of the Painted Skin "demon" from Pu Song Ling. Another example is Baigujing, the white-skeleton spirit, who adopts various disguises an attempt to consume the flesh of a holy man to obtain immortality.

Cultivated creatures

In Chinese folklore, both supernatural power and immortality can be cultivated by ordinary mortals and even animals. This cultivation usually involves some kind of meditative or hygienic practice, the consumption of certain foods and certain mental and physical exercises. Through long perseverance in such practices, living creatures such as animals and plants, and even inorganic objects such as rocks and musical instruments may gain supernatural power, immense wisdom, or look completely similar to humans through years of cultivation. Such a situation is called "成精 (Chengjing)", "Yaoguai" and "Yaojing" are most often called such creatures, and only a few, which achieve immortality, are called "Xian" (仙).

This category or type of Yaoguai often appears in classic stories such as Journey to the West, Legend of the White Snake, Investiture of the Gods and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. It is also alluded to in the works of the secular and naturalistic philosopher Wang Chong, who denied the existence of an afterlife and of ghosts, but claimed objects could acquire strange powers due to immense age.

Demoted gods

In the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West, some gods were banished to the mortal world and became Yaoguai because they violated the laws of heaven. The most representative ones are Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing. In addition, in the Journey to the West in the heavenly court, some immortals decide to privately descend on their own accord. Many of them are waiters and mounts around the gods, such as the Golden and Silver Horned Kings of the Taishang Laojun, Yellow Robe Demon, which was originally Kui Mulang, Maitreya Bodhisattva's Yellow Brows Great King, Manjushri's Azure Lion and so on. These end up becoming yaoguai.

Literature of the "Gods and Demons" (Shen Mo) Genre

Investiture of the Gods

In the literary text, Investiture of the Gods, the fox-sprite Daji is sent on a mission by the goddess Nuwa, to corrupt the last king of the Shang and to instigate the fall of his dynasty, as punishment for the latter composing a ribald poem. She is accompanied and aided by two other yaoguai - Pipa Jing, a magical instrument who has taken on the form of a maiden, and Jiutou Zhiji Jing, a nine-headed pheasant who has also acquired human form.

Journey to the West

In Journey to the West, many demons seek immortality through the abduction and consumption of a holy man (in this case, Tang Sanzang). This includes a baigujing, who was originally the exposed white skeleton of a maiden that upon absorbing the energies of the sun and moon over long course, transforms into a "yaojing" with shapeshifting powers. Baigujing yearns to consume the flesh of a holy man in order to obtain immortality. Other "yao" were fallen pets or mounts of deities, who, having been expelled from heaven, proceed to make a nuisance of themselves on earth. The text also describes yaoguai kings (mówáng) that command a number of lesser demon minions.

Notably, Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, uses this term often to insult his adversaries. However, Wukong himself is also referred to as a demon not long after his birth by the narrator of Journey to the West and by his adversaries during his conflict with Heaven.

White Skeleton Fairy (Bai Gu Jing) depicted in her disguise as a slender woman

Literature of the "Records of the Strange" (Zhi-Guai) Genre

Yaoguai are the antagonists in a genre of literature known as zhiguai literature. Although they were produced principally for entertainment, it is worth noting that the appearance of anomalies in this genre literature is often associated with sociopolitical portents and a reflection of the current state of the cosmopolitical order, and that themes of dissatisfaction with the human condition resonate in the texts and lives of authors. "Hu Hao Hao"

Repressed sexuality is often a theme in such literature. In Yue Jun's collection "Hu Hao Hao", a couple is forced to engage in a threesome with a fox spirit against their will, and are powerless to resist the yaoguai. Yue Jun however, publicly disclaimed any didactic purpose in his writing, saying that these tales were not to be taken too seriously, implying they were written for the purposes of entertainment.

The Painted Skin, a tale from Pu SongLing, narrates a story of a yaoguai that collects and disguises itself in human skin

"Painted Skin"

Another theme is the ambivalent nature of beauty, which can mask great evil. This theme was the driving force behind Pu Song Ling's tale the "Painted Skin", as the author himself noted in a postscript:

"How foolish men are, to see nothing but beauty in what is clearly evil! And how benighted to dismiss as absurd what is clearly well-intended! It is folly such as this that obliges the lady Chen to steel herself to eat another man's phlegm, when her husband has fallen prey to lust. Heaven's Way has its inexorable justice, but some mortals remain foolish and never see the light!"

In modern culture

In popular culture yaoguai often engage in romantic relationships with humans. These relations are usually described as subversive of the natural order, if not forbidden, and usually have detrimental effects on their human partners. The truly evil ones are usually referred to as guài (literally, "weird") or mó (literally, "demon" or "magic") in Chinese and in popular culture they are often depicted as feeding on the vital energy of their thralls. Their greatest goal is achieving immortality and deification. But monsters are not usually thought of in a religious sense. Whilst not all are evil, their appearance is generally regarded as inauspicious.

Etymology and Disambiguation

Etymology

Yaoguai (妖怪) is a compound word consisting of two Chinese characters. 妖 (yāo) is a noun meaning monster or demon. 怪 (guài) means strange or unusual when used as an adjective, and monster or unusual creature as a noun. Both of the individual words 妖 and 怪 in the compound word 妖怪 signifies and connotes strangeness, but 妖 carries the additional connotation of seduction or supernatural enthrallment, whereas 怪 signifies a monster.

Terms like yaogui (妖鬼; yāoguǐ, 'strange ghost'), yaomo (妖魔; yāomó, 'daemon'), yaojing (妖精; yāojīng, often translated as "sprite" or "faerie"), and yaopo (妖婆; yaopo, "hag" or "witch") are related beings. They feature in Chinese literature, folktales, and mythology. The Japanese term yokai is simply the Japanese transliteration or pronunciation of the 妖怪 yāoguài.

Classical usages

Classical usages of both terms relate to preternatural phenomena and freakish occurrences where explanation fell outside the limited understanding of those observing them. These included freakish vegetation ("草妖"), eerie sounds ("鼓妖"), the unnatural onset of fog and darkness ("夜妖"), as well as a sudden loss in verbal fluency or inability to express oneself ("诗妖"). Yāo are blamed for sudden outbreaks of confused and erratic action, or transgressive behaviour ("胡作非为"), with one saying being that "when affairs go awry, there must have been a yāo (acting)" ("事出反必有妖").

Later usages

In later terminology, yāo refers to natural objects (animals, plants or rocks) which have acquired sentience (lit. spiritual awareness), the ability to assume human or near-human forms, supernatural or magical powers, as well as the ability to cultivate so as to achieve immortality or transcendence.

Disambiguation

Yaoguai (妖怪) are usually seen as distinct creatures from "ghosts and spectres" (鬼, pinyin: gui), "demons and devils" (魔, pinyin: mo), "monsters and aberrations" 怪 (pinyin: guai). In general, ghosts and specters are the spirits of the deceased, whereas "demons and devils" are often described as fallen immortals and gods that have succumbed to a particular temptation or elected to take a forbidden path to achieve their goals. Sometimes, however, the terms yao 妖, spectre 鬼, demon 魔 and monster 怪 are used interchangeably in the text, even though the creature in question derives its existence from an aberration in the natural flow of cosmic energies and is therefore a 妖.

In popular culture

Modern adaptations in Chinese cinema and culture

• In the 1987 HK film entitled A Chinese Ghost Story a yaoguai in the form of a "tree demon" was the main antagonist. The "tree demon" was able to command the spirits of the dead to do its bidding, and one of the ghosts falls in love and saves the main protagonist, Nie Huaiqing.
• In the 1990 HK film entitled A Chinese Ghost Story II a yaoguai in the form of a "centipede demon" with magical powers masquerades as a Buddhist monk to consume the essence of the ministers of the royal court.
• In the 2017 movie Wish Upon, a Yaoguai is the spirit of the music box, which grants seven wishes but kills someone close to the owner every time a wish is granted. If the seventh wish is granted, the Yaoguai will claim the soul of the owner.
• Yaojing and Yaoguai appear in popular TV series produced in China, such as Love and Redemption, Three Lives, Three Loves, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, and Ashes of Love. Aside from the typical fox spirits who appear in these creatures, other examples of yao* include animals, plants, and inanimate objects. All three of these series are based on Chinese e-novels in the Chinese Fantasy genre. In this genre, various types of yao* are distinguished by whether they have celestial or demonic spiritual roots, but characters with either root may be good, evil, or neutral.
  • In any case, the creatures called "yao*" in the story will basically not be tolerated by human society or the world governed by gods. It is already unwritten that they are arrested, sanctioned, eradicated, or forced into society by humans or gods.
• The video game Amazing Cultivation Simulator contains 12 different races of yaoguai that the player may choose to be members of their colony.
• The Taiwanese black metal band Chthonic has a drummer who wears a metal mask of a black demon mouth.

Japanese adaptations

• The Yaoguai's Yaomo alias was used in AdventureQuest Worlds during its 2014 Akiba's New Year celebration on Yokai Island. It is depicted as a horned half-demon half-horse creature (with its build being similar to a centaur) with additional eyes on its chest and parts of the horse body. It was responsible for corrupting Akiba's Jingshen Forest causing the Qilin Senlin-Ma (who was the guardian of the Jingshen Forest) to enlist the player for help. The players were able to defeat the Yaomo.

Western adaptations

• The Fallout series features mutated bears identified as Yao Guai. These creatures roam many parts of post-War America, appearing in Fallout 3, the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76. They attack both the player and various non-player characters. In Fallout 3, one of the in-game radio stations broadcasts an occasional public service announcement reminding listeners "don't feed the Yao Guai". In Fallout lore, the Yao Guai were named by descendants of Chinese internment camp prisoners.
• In the "Dark Aether" ("Zombies") storyline of the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the QBZ-83 assault rifle can be upgraded ("pack-a-punched"), giving the gun the name "yaoguai".
• In the DLC "Nightmare in North Point" of the video game Sleeping Dogs, players fight demonic creatures called "Yaoguai".
• The American fantasy television series Once Upon a Time featured a creature called a Yaoguai in the second-season episode "The Outsider". Here, it was depicted as a large lion-like creature with a mane of fire. Maleficent transformed Prince Phillip into a Yaoguai until it was undone by Belle.
• An episode of the television series Sleepy Hollow features the Yaoguai as a demon who is attracted to aggression and gunpowder from a gun.
• The mobile game Gems of War features a legendary troop called Yao Guai.
• In the 2023 TV series American Born Chinese, based on the 2006 graphic novel, the main antagonist is Niu Mowang.

See also

• Fox spirit
• Huli jing – Chinese mythological creaturesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Wekufe – type of harmful spirit or demon in Mapuche mythologyPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• Yōsei – Spiritlike creature from Japanese folklore
• Yōkai – Supernatural beings from Japanese folklore