Magical Creatures Week 9 Report

• Lauren B
• 0
• on Oct 27, 2022

This week we read two textbook chapters, a PDF document, and a scroll painting. The first chapter, “Mount Kunlun, the Jade Mountain, and the Queen Mother of the West” talks about the symbolism behind each mountain and what it represents in Chinese culture. The Queen Mother of the West lived on Jade Mountain which incited the jade worship in China as well as its connection with life and death, she is a highly respected and yet feared deity in Chinese culture. It also brings up guideways and their significance as well as certain pieces of information included in them like measurements. The next chapter titled “Taoist Exorcisms” focuses on how demons affect local communities in China. Many wanted to exorcize the demons so they could have peace. There are multiple different kinds of exorcists each with their own distinct function and social standing. Rituals were meant to demonstrate organization against demons causing chaos. These rituals were extremely structured in their presentation and goal. The PDF was about  the “Shanxiao: Mountain Goblins” and how they’re similar to goblins and fairies that we’re familiar with from Europe. It was widely believed that many creatures could cause harm directly to people or places after they’ve left that area. Mountain creatures were widely understood to be different from other creatures in the way they often had disfigured legs (having one leg or an inverted heel). Sometimes however the creatures could deal with humans in a nonviolent way as well. The scroll painting “Searching the Mountains for Demons” depicts an exorcism. In it Erlang is fighting creatures that are still in power who were wreaking havoc on the local area.

So far on my to-do list I have to work through the rest of my chapters adn get into contact with some of the other groups because we have to know if they add an image, remove one, or get rid of a chapter which would also get rid of images. 

As an accessibility officer my group and I had a meeting with Tim Clarke and learned about our first steps for accessibility. We split up the existing chapters so we’re each doing half and are going through each image and making sure the caption and alt text are clear, concise, and descriptive enough. I worked through three chapters already. We’re also making a list of problems we see so we can send them off to the proper groups in chunks.

This week I don’t really have any questions.