So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources
"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.
As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.
(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)
The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.
-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?
In that case,Ā Journey to the WestĀ andĀ Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi)Ā serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translationsāāAnthony C. Yu's JTTW translationĀ is very good,Ā Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.
Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.
And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.
(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar hasĀ a paperĀ that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)
After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check outĀ Journey to theĀ North/South/EastĀ (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.
-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?
Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entireĀ DaozangĀ orĀ Yunji QiqianĀ or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, likeĀ Liexian ZhuanĀ andĀ Zhenling Weiye Tu.
Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, akaĀ Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.
(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)
(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)
Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong'sĀ BaopuziĀ (N & S. dynasty) andĀ Zhonglv Chuandao JiĀ (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.
-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?
Classics of Mountains and Seas, akaĀ Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.
A later work, the Han-dynastyĀ Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.
Shenyi JingĀ might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.
-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?
Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiumsāāSoushen JiĀ (N/S dynasty),Ā You Yang Za ZuĀ (Tang),Ā Taiping GuangjiĀ (early Song),Ā Yijian ZhiĀ (Southern Song)...
Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".
As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.
Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, akaĀ Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together withĀ Yuewei Caotang BijiĀ andĀ Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.
The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.
Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books likeĀ Zuo ZhuanĀ or poetry collections like Qu Yuan'sĀ Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.
