In the country of Lin(林氏國), there lived a rare beast. It was as big as a tiger, with a colorful body and a tail longer than its body. The beast was named Zouwu(騶虞), and riding it could allow one to travel a thousand miles in a day.
林氏國有珍獸，大若虎，五采畢具，尾長於身，名曰騶虞(騶吾)，乘之日行千裏。
《山海經 海內北經》
A Zen master on Mount Wutai once took on a disciple who was only three years old at the time. Mount Wutai is extremely high, and the master and disciple practiced on the summit, never descending the mountain. After more than ten years, the master and the disciple descended the mountain together. The young monk saw cows, horses, chickens, and dogs but didn’t know what they were.
The master pointed and told him, “This is a cow, used for plowing fields.
In the south of Dali County(大理縣)), Yunnan Province(雲南), there was a villager named Li Shigui(李士桂), whose family had been engaged in farming for generations and also raised two water buffaloes.
One day, it was already dark and the two water buffaloes hadn’t returned yet. Li Shigui went out to search for them. In the night, aided by the moonlight, he saw an animal lying in the field sleeping, making snoring sounds like thunder.
Guandong(關東) resident Xu Shangen(許善根) made a living by digging for ginseng roots(人參). According to the custom, ginseng diggers had to go up the mountains to dig only when it was late and quiet. One day, exhausted from traveling at night, Xu Shangen fell asleep on the sandy ground. When he woke up, he found himself being held by a hairy man. This hairy man stood about twenty feet tall, covered all over with red hair.
He saw a little ghost, shaped like a seven or eight year old boy, without clothes.
Towards the end of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, Yuzhou experienced numerous cases of tigers attacking people. Despite setting up traps with mechanisms, none proved successful in catching a tiger.
One moonlit night, a man climbed a tree and patiently waited. He spotted a small ghost resembling a seven or eight-year-old boy, unclothed, strolling nearby. The boy wore turquoise-colored top and bottom clothes.
She saw they were all tigers, but she did not dare to say anything.
During the reign of Emperor Kaiyuan of the Tang Dynasty, a tiger took the daughter of a family as his wife and built a house in the mountains. The woman did not realize that her husband was a tiger even after two years.
One day, two guests came with wine and drank with her husband in the house.
