Chaofeng

Also Known As: Chinese 嘲風, also romanized Ch’ao-feng; the third of the nine sons of the dragon in the Ming lists
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Chinese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It loves danger and high places, and its image on a roof is said to frighten off evil and turn disaster aside.
Role in Mythos: It is the third of the nine sons of the dragon, the one whose nature explains the beasts set on the corners of palace and temple roofs.
Relation to Humans: Builders put its likeness on the corners of halls, where it keeps watch over the people below. It asks nothing of them in return and no tale has it speak to anyone.

Wind comes hard across the yellow roofs of the Forbidden City, and at the very edge of each corner, where the tiles curve up and run out into empty air, a line of small glazed animals sits facing the drop. They have been there through five centuries of frost and summer thunder. Nothing holds them but mortar and a taste for the view. Ask what they are and one old answer is a single name: Chaofeng, the dragon’s son who likes danger.

He comes from a list, and the list has a date. Sometime in the reign of the Hongzhi Emperor, who ruled China from 1487 to 1505, a question arrived at the Grand Secretariat from the palace. The emperor had heard that the dragon fathered nine sons and that none of them turned out a dragon. He wanted their names. A collection of court anecdotes set down a few years later, the Zhishi yuwen, tells what happened next. Nobody in the room knew. The senior grand secretary, Li Dongyang, half remembered something but did not dare answer on the spot. He went outside the office, asked two learned colleagues, pieced a list together and sent it up.

That list survives in Li Dongyang’s collected works. Each son has a liking, and each liking explains a carving that craftsmen had been making for generations. One loves music and sits on the head of a fiddle. One loves killing and bites the blade of a sword. One loves to roar and crouches on top of a bell. The third is Chaofeng. He loves danger, the text says, and so he is the beast on the corners of halls. That is the whole of his entry.

It is a short record for something seen on so many roofs. The names were not all new. An older notebook by Lu Rong, who died in 1494, had already gathered fourteen odd creatures found on buildings and vessels, and one of them is a small dragon-shaped thing that likes to stand in risky places. A later text says outright that this creature and Chaofeng are the same. What Li Dongyang’s circle added was the family: nine brothers, one father, a tidy number. The poet Yang Shen, born in 1488, drew up his own version with the order and two of the names changed. Xie Zhaozhe repeated the nine around the end of the sixteenth century and Fang Yizhi did so again in the seventeenth. Chaofeng holds third place in the best known of them, and his line hardly changes. Loves danger. Corner of the hall.

So he has no childhood, no quarrel and no death. The dragon is his father and nobody names a mother. What he has is a post.

His appearance is harder to pin down than a visitor might expect. The writers who named him did not describe him. They pointed. The beasts on the corners, they said, and left it there. Later tellings fill the gap in different ways. Some make him a small dragon with something of the dog about him, crouched and alert. Others give him the look of a bird. On the roofs themselves the corner figures are a mixed company: a little man riding a fowl at the front, then lions, sea horses, horned and scaled things, each no taller than a forearm, fired in the same yellow or green glaze as the tiles under them. The grander the building, the longer the line. The throne hall of the Forbidden City carries ten behind the rider. Whether Chaofeng is one of these, or the first of them, or the name for the whole procession, the sources do not settle.

On an ordinary day he does what he was put there to do. Rain sheets off the eaves and hisses in the courtyard drains, and the little figure at the corner sits in it, unmoved, looking out over the wall. Below him a clerk hurries across the wet stone with his sleeves over his head and does not glance up.

The moment that made him belongs to people, not to dragons. A messenger waits in a doorway of the Grand Secretariat for an answer. Inside, the most senior scholars in the empire look at one another in silence. Li Dongyang, who will fill the gap by nightfall, says nothing yet. It is a quiet scene, and every later telling of the nine sons starts there.

His powers follow from where he sits. A creature that enjoys the edge is the right one to guard it, and tradition gives the roof beasts the work of scaring off evil spirits and keeping calamity from the house. Some accounts add that he watches the distance and gives warning of trouble on its way. Height is his element. He can stay where a person would fall.

His limits are just as plain. He never leaves the roof. He does not fly, fight or speak in any text that names him, and he works no wonder that anyone thought to write down. He is fired clay, and clay cracks in frost and comes away in a storm. When a tile slips, he goes down with it. He also has no shrine. Nobody prays to him, and a hall without him is only a hall of lower rank. The most dangerous thing he ever did was sit still.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chaofeng?

Chaofeng is one of the nine sons of the dragon in Chinese mythology. He is the son who loves danger and high places, and his image is set on the corners of palace and temple roofs. In the best-known lists he is the third son.

Where does the story of Chaofeng come from?

Chaofeng comes from lists drawn up by scholars in Ming China around 1500. A court anecdote says the Hongzhi Emperor asked for the names of the dragon’s nine sons, and the grand secretary Li Dongyang put a list together after asking two colleagues. Later writers such as Yang Shen, Xie Zhaozhe and Fang Yizhi repeated the list with changes.

What does Chaofeng look like?

The Ming texts that name Chaofeng do not describe his body. They only say he is the beast on the corners of halls. Later tellings disagree, with some making him a small doglike dragon and others giving him the look of a bird.

What does Chaofeng do?

Chaofeng sits on the corner of a roof and keeps watch. Tradition says the roof beasts scare away evil spirits and keep disaster from the building. Some accounts add that he watches the distance and warns of coming trouble.

Is Chaofeng the same as the row of animals on Chinese palace roofs?

Chaofeng is linked to that row, but the sources do not agree on how. The early texts point to the beasts on the hall corners without saying whether he is one figure or the whole line. The row itself includes a man riding a fowl followed by lions, sea horses and other creatures in glazed tile.