Clippings

In the first century of the Christian era, the bold atheist Wang Ch’ung denied that the Phoenix was of a distinct species. He said that just as a serpent could change into a fish, and a rat change into a tortoise, and just as the stag, in times of general prosperity, was transformed into a unicorn, so the goose took the form of the Phoenix. He attributed this mutation to the “propitious liquid” which, 2,356 years before the Christian era, had made the garden of Yao, one of the exemplary emperors, grow vermilion grass. As one can see, Wang Ch’ung’s information was faulty — or rather, excessive.

In the underworld there is an imaginary building called the Tower of the Phoenix.