

If water is not piled up deep enough, it won't have the strength to bear up a big boat. Is that its real color, or is it because it is so far away and has no end? When the bird looks down, all he sees is blue too. He beats the whirlwind and rises ninety thousand li, setting off on the sixth month gale." Wavering heat, bits of dust, living things blowing each other about – the sky looks very blue. The Universal Harmony records various wonders, and it says: "When the P'eng journeys to the southern darkness, the waters are roiled for three thousand li. When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven. The back of the P'eng measures I don't know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P'eng. The K'un is so huge I don't know how many thousand li he measures. In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K'un. The Peng fish-bird transformation is not only the beginning myth in Zhuangzi, but Robert Allinson claims, "the central myth". The first account contrasts the giant Peng bird with a small tiao (蜩 "cicada") and jiu (鳩 "pigeon turtledove") and the third with a yan (鴳 or 鷃 "quail"). The first chapter ("Free and Easy Wandering" 逍遙遊 pinyin xiāoyáoyóu) begins with three versions of this parable the lead paragraph, a quote from the Qixie (齊諧 "Universal Harmony", probably invented by Zhuangzi), and a quote from the Tang zhi wen Ji (湯之問棘 "Questions of Tang to Ji", cf. In Chinese literature, the Daoist classic Zhuangzi has the oldest record of the Kun Peng myth. Dapeng is also a place name for a few places in greater China, most notably in Shenzhen and Taiwan.Īfter recent fossil discoveries in northeast China, Chinese paleontologists used Peng to name the enantiornithine bird Pengornis and the wukongopterid pterosaur Kunpengopterus. Synonyms of Peng include Dapeng (大鵬 "Big Peng", "Great Peng") and Dapengniao (大鵬鳥 "Great Peng Bird"). 100 CE Shuowen Jiezi) Kun 鯤 originally meant "fish roe fry spawn" (ca. Peng ( 鵬) was anciently a variant Chinese character for feng ( 鳳) in fenghuang (鳳凰 "Chinese phoenix" ca. Peng (鵬) combines the "bird radical" ( 鳥) with a peng ( 朋 "friend") phonetic, and kun combines the "fish radical" ( 魚) with a kun ( 昆 "progeny insect") phonetic.īoth the mythic Chinese Peng and Kun names involve word play. The Chinese logograms for peng and kun exemplify common radical-phonetic characters.

Peng ( traditional Chinese: 鵬 simplified Chinese: 鹏 pinyin: péng Wade–Giles: p'eng) or Dapeng ( 大鵬) is a giant bird that transforms from a Kun ( 鯤 鲲 kūn k'un) giant fish in Chinese mythology. Wing of the Peng from the Japanese Kyoka Hyaku Monogatari.
