Taotie 饕餮 (tāo tiè)

Watercolor and Alcohol Markers, 2020

Wen Ting Dong 董文婷

Taotie is another member of the Four Fierce Beasts in Chinese mythology. Legends disagree on the origin of the beast. One legend has that he was formerly a talentless son of the Jinyun (缙云氏) family, another says that he is one of the nine sons of the dragon and that he ate himself to death. It’s also believed that he could be the severed head of Chiyou(蚩尤) who is the legendary king that fought the Yellow Emperor and Yan Emperor. Taotie has the body of a goat, teeth of a tiger, human hands, eyes in the armpit, and it cries like a human infant. This beast was known to be a glutton, eating everything around it, including its own body, so as a result, only the head of this beast appears in many jade and bronze artifacts from China. Taotie is used to describe people who are extremely greedy or gluttonous.