Youyou

Zhu Mountain, in the second eastern guideway, overlooks the Zhu River to the south and a lake country to the east. Its beast is the youyou: in the main a horse, but set with a goat's eyes, crowned with four horns, and finished with an ox's tail, its cry the howl of a dog. Parts from four barnyard animals assemble into something like a mount that no one would saddle, ranging a hillside above the water.

Its omen is a rarity in the classic's registry of disasters: 'when it is seen, the state abounds in cunning schemers.' It answers for no drought, flood, or pestilence; wherever the youyou appears, the devious will multiply and thrive. Only a handful of portents in the book land on politics and human character rather than weather, and the youyou pairs naturally with the zhuru, herald of panic: one announces the mood of a crisis, the other the men who will exploit it. Commentators accordingly read the beast as a political warning: small men are about to have their day.

The same mountain keeps the jiegou, a duck-shaped, rat-tailed bird that climbs trees, whose appearance brings epidemics. One mountain, two omens — schemers and sickness. Zhu Mountain earns its place among the unluckiest addresses of the eastern guideways.