The hunt for the elusive allegedly chinese legendary Dragon: Haoxian. Conclusions, investigations and thoughts (Case closed)
Some months ago i have crossed paths with someone looking for a specific piece of Chinese mythology, and it was so elusive that i got compelled to bring it here and see if i could gather any help on finding clues.
I posted it back in April, and lately the user @nuzme from twitter, reached me through Discord to document his findings. All credits on this research goes to him, since i was there mostly to discuss his findings.
Just to clarify: Credits on most of the research into finding Haoxian sources after my original post, goes to @nuzme on twitter, aka Nawell. He is the one who took the time to analyze my post, sources, and info. I am only updating the post! Thanks Nuzme!
Credits also goes for DennysFFD, the original person that reached me and was able to read the chinese hanzi we found. Thank you as well!
If you are hunting information on a fantastical being, demon, yokai, whimsical creature, monster, etc... And want help, please DM me here or in my Discord! @megidolaonn
Firs thing's first, Nuzme was able to trace back one of the sources from my last post: The book ''All About Chinese Dragons'' From Roy Bates.
This Book is interesting because Bates actually tells us where did he found Haoxian, and he mentions a ''Beijing Tourist Magazine'' from 1989. Bates also treats Haoxian as a title, or type of being, rather than a specific name of a creature.
Sadly Bates did not share the Hanzi for the Haoxian, and i could not manage to contact Bates by any means. But the way he puts it, seems like he read that in an old tourist magazine in the late 1980s.
But, Nuzme also pointed that Bates puts it like Haoxian has some importance, ''A celestial beast with extraordinary powers''. But still, we were not able to find much about this so called celestial beast.
Nuzme efforts also pointed that the Haoxian web presence much probably started in here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060824100320/http://www.chinapage.com/main2.html
It seems most of the sites parroting Haoxian copied this page. Even the BlackDrago sources from my last post. The China page site is at least from 2003 according to web archive, and seems to be the root of Haoxian web presence. Also worth to notice that in China Page, Haoxian replaces Chao Feng. Bates comments this, telling us that Chao Feng is a Haoxian, as if it's a type of creature or title, but he does not expand on that, besides the supposed importance of this type of creature. Furthermore, after China Page posts it, later westerners started to copy and paste it.
We know for sure that Bates was probably the one who started the Haoxian thing, because there is no mention of it older than the 1980s. At least, not that we could find...
There is another book about this group of dragons, The Sons of the Dragon King, from the author Ed Young. But again, it does not mention Haoxian at all.
This leaves us with the only unaccounted source in this story: The fabled Beijing tourist magazine, Bates mentions. Which i think it's absolutely lost to time, so we are getting by his words.
It is almost safe to say whatever this is, could have been invented or misinformed by this magazine. However, would be very good if anyone that knows Chinese and Chinese mythology could shed some light if Haoxian does indeed means anything, because as me and Nuzme found out, googling it is no use.
Nuzme went as far as to check for more sources, even in English, about the 9 dragon sons, but also did not found nothing.
I did brought up the hypothesis about the magazine have being made by westerns who could had misread the name, but Nuzme doubted it. If that was not the case, i think that it is even possible that locals could have misread some Hanzi, they are not that easy to read after all.
Maybe Haoxian do exist, but it was misplaced as a part of this group of dragons? That's what Bates seemed to think as well.
I would love to ask Bates himself, but... As i said before, i was not able to find him. That's a shame, but maybe this post can reach him somehow.
Nuzme also found another person in charge of Chinapage, because the original owner was not active anymore. (Nuzme suspected he already passed away, since the page is 20 years old, and was ran by a old person) And this was a man named Siu-Leung Lee. Curiously, he worked at the movie Avatar, and was very active on the web, even had a LinkedIn account. I could not message him, because his page was locked though.
Nuzme found what seemed to be another good lead, in another of Roy Bates books: What seemed to be Haoxian's Hanzi! That was a breakthrough in this case. The book in question is ''29 Chinese Mysteries'' also from Roy Bates:
The hanzi would be: 耗羨
Which.... when using software translates to ''Consumption Envy'' and not to ''Squander-Mouse'' as Bates points, which would still be very confusing. It seems not even him was being able to find more about this elusive dragon, mentioning the sources were scarce.
Also, looking to Chao Feng and this supposedly Haoxian hanzi, we can rule out misreading because they at least, from our perspective, looks very different side by side:
Chaofeng 嘲風 - 耗羨 Haoxian
My honest reaction....
Then if it is not a misread, then what on earth gave birth to this elusive creature? Well, it all traced back to that said tourist magazine from Beijing. We have no way to access it, nor knowing who wrote it, and contacting Bates is also impossible at this point, so we were at that point, drawing our own conclusions here.
Mine was that it could be a complete fabrication, a hoax, something to catch tourists attention, maybe something the creators of the magazine really did believe, or maybe it is some regional and very specific tale that made its way to that magazine. Either way, with all the evidence gathered to this point, we could at least assume that Haoxian is not a part of the 9 dragons, it is probably refereed as naming for a type of ''Celestial Creature'', and if it is not a hoax, it probably got there by accident or misinformation.
Nuzme's conclusion was that it ''is either a complete fabrication, some sort of pet theory that the tour guide passes off as true (which is very common in anything folkloric or religion) or a very specific regional thing (...) '' Nuzme also leans more in the idea it was a misunderstanding, since it came from a non academic or intelectual source: A tour guide magazine.
I even found what i THINK could be said magazine being sold on Ebay and Amazon, but it ended up expensive to import, and it's too much trouble for something i don't even know that will help. But, if you end up having it, or have access to it and want to send us a PDF, be my guest.
This could be the magazine, but there is no way to know for sure.
Back to the Hanzi and how the case is closed
So, having reached this point i brought the case to the person that originally brought this mystery to me, the OP DennysFFD. They were already very happy to have the Hanzi Nuzme found, and they were actually capable to read it properly.
We discussed a theory, but: There is no way to know 100% without Bate's word and or the magazine, but based on our evidence, we can go for this theory, and it makes a lot of sense at least for me.
The OP was able to clarify that the hanzi for Haoxian was referring to some sort of tax system. The OP made a wild guess that the author, Bates, could had got something wrong there. That is because, there is another similar hanzi: Shouxian 仙兽. Shouxian can mean immortal beast, and would made a lot of sense to be used for Chao Feng.
There is also Xianshou, a beast who attain immortality, which is the same hanzi but swapped. A dragon could be called both, it's a generalization for mythical creatures.
-Addendum: 仙兽 in chinese science taxonomy also refers to a type of extinct gliding animal, its unrelated just a shared name.
The author could have misread or misheard the word Shouxian referring to Chao Feng, then unknowingly asks people to write the word, which ends up as the word haoxian. Without any context, people would write it as the most common haoxian they knew... a tax system!
Chao Feng Source of the image: Inchin Closer
In conclusion: Chao Feng was described as an immortal beast by this magazine, it was misread as ''Haoxian'' and the name spread from there. From what we could gather there was no dragon called Haoxian and it is fore sure, not a part of the 9 dragon sons.
It was all a educated guess and a theory, if Bates come foward this could be much easier explained, but evidence strongly suggests that. So it's a case closed for me.
Thanks again Nuzme and DennysFFD for their findings, and specially for helping me to bring this post to life. It was such a journey!
Sources are through the text, but are generally the two Bate's books. I hope you all liked it!
