Bi Fang

Also Known As: also Bifang, the Bifang bird; Chinese 畢方; the old books say the name is the sound of its own call
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Bi Fang is a one-legged bird like a crane whose appearance means that strange fire will break out in the town that sees it.
Role in Mythos: It is a fire omen in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, an escort beside the Yellow Emperor’s chariot in the Han Feizi, and the creature born of wood in the Huainanzi.
Relation to Humans: A town that sees Bi Fang can expect a fire that nobody can explain. In the story of the Yellow Emperor it is no threat to anyone and simply keeps its place beside his wheel.

A bare mountain stands in the far west of the old Chinese map. Nothing grows on it. There is no grass and not one tree, only pale jade and green stone lying about in the open, and the book that lists it adds a short warning: the things found here are very strange.

The book is the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the great catalogue of peaks, rivers and creatures put together more than two thousand years ago. The mountain is Mount Zhang’e, and it has two residents. One is a beast called the Zheng, shaped like a red leopard, with five tails and a single horn and a voice like stone struck on stone. The other is a bird. It looks like a crane. It has one leg. Its body is blue-green with red markings and its beak is white. It is called Bi Fang, and the book explains the name in four words: it calls itself. The cry it makes is the sound of its own name, over and over, across the empty rock.

Then comes the line that made the bird famous. Wherever it is seen, that town will have strange fire.

The word the book uses does not mean ordinary fire. It means fire that is wrong, fire with no cause anyone can find. A roof takes light on a still night. A storehouse burns with no lamp left in it. People smell smoke, run out into the lane and find that nobody knocked over a stove. In the days before, someone had seen a tall bird standing on one leg where no such bird should be, green and red, calling two flat notes. The book does not say the bird sets the fire. It says only that the one follows the other. Later tellings were less careful and put the flame in its beak.

The same catalogue mentions Bi Fang a second time, in its tour of the lands beyond the southern sea. There the bird lives west of a river called the Blue Water and east of a band of sixteen small spirit men who link arms and keep the night watch for the high god. The entry is a single line and repeats the one fact that matters. It is a bird with one leg.

Nothing says where it came from in the way a god has a birth. The nearest thing to an origin is a sentence in the Huainanzi, a book of the second century before the common era, which says that wood gives birth to Bi Fang. That is a tidy fit. Wood is what fire feeds on, and a bird hatched from wood would carry fire with it the way a flint does. A plainer explanation has also been offered. A crane sleeps standing on one leg, and a crane seen at dusk is a tall thin bird with a pale beak and one foot on the ground.

Bi Fang has one great scene, and it is not on the mountain. The philosopher Han Fei tells it in a chapter on the ten faults of rulers. Duke Ping of Jin has a blind music master, Shi Kuang, and the duke wants to hear the saddest and strongest tune there is. Shi Kuang tells him he must not, and explains where the tune came from. Long ago the Yellow Emperor called all the ghosts and spirits together on the top of Mount Tai. He rode in a chariot of ivory drawn by six dragons. Bi Fang kept pace beside the hub of the wheel. Chi You went in front. The Earl of the Wind ran ahead and swept the road, and the Master of Rain sprinkled it to lay the dust. Tigers and wolves led the way, ghosts and spirits came on behind, serpents slid along the ground and phoenixes covered the sky above. For that gathering the Yellow Emperor made the music, and no lesser man was fit to hear it.

The duke liked music more than advice. He ordered it played. At the first notes black cloud rose in the north-west. Then wind came, and a hard rain that tore the hangings, smashed the dishes on the tables and shook tiles off the gallery roof. The guests ran. The duke crouched in a side room, shaking. After that Jin had three years of drought and the duke fell sick. The bird that walked beside the Emperor’s wheel did nothing at all to him. The music was enough.

The two pictures do not match, and nobody in the old books tries to make them. On the mountain Bi Fang is a bad sign. Beside the chariot it is an honoured attendant, in the same company as dragons and phoenixes. It may be that a fire bird in the train of the right king is simply fire under control.

Its power is narrow and exact. It does not hunt and it does not strike. Its being seen is the whole of it, and what follows is flame that has no author. Its body is the same in every source: crane-shaped, one-legged, green and red, white at the beak.

Its limits are harder to list because so little is said. Nobody is told what to do about it. The Classic of Mountains and Seas often adds that eating a creature or wearing its skin will cure this or ward off that. For Bi Fang there is no remedy, no charm and no hunter. It stands on a mountain where nothing can burn, since nothing grows there, and it is dangerous only when it leaves. The one figure ever shown keeping it in line is the Yellow Emperor, and he needed every spirit in the world on a mountaintop to do it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bi Fang in Chinese mythology?

Bi Fang is a one-legged bird of Chinese mythology that looks like a crane. It is described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas as an omen of strange fire. When Bi Fang is seen, the town that sees it will suffer a fire with no clear cause.

What does Bi Fang look like?

Bi Fang has the shape of a crane with only one leg. Its body is blue-green with red markings, and its beak is white. Every old description of Bi Fang repeats the single leg.

Where does Bi Fang live?

Bi Fang lives on Mount Zhang’e, a bare western mountain with no grass or trees and a great deal of jade. It shares the mountain with the Zheng, a red leopard-like beast with five tails and one horn. A second passage in the Classic of Mountains and Seas places Bi Fang beyond the southern sea, west of the Blue Water.

Why is it called Bi Fang?

The Classic of Mountains and Seas says that Bi Fang calls its own name. The name is meant to copy the sound of the bird’s cry.

What is the link between Bi Fang and the Yellow Emperor?

In the Han Feizi, Bi Fang keeps pace beside the wheel of the Yellow Emperor’s chariot when he gathers the ghosts and spirits on Mount Tai. Chi You goes in front, the Earl of the Wind sweeps the road and the Master of Rain sprinkles it. In this story Bi Fang is an honoured attendant and not a bad omen.