Lang Ying (1487-ca. 1570) was an avid book collector and scholar whose poor health prevented him from serving as an official. He compiled copious notes from his broad reading, divided into seven categories: “heaven and earth” (geography); “the dynasty’s affairs” (Ming political history); “moral duty and principle” (ethics and philosophy); “discerning true from false” (evidence-based critical thinking); “poetry and prose” (literature); “things” (material culture, food, and animals); and “the strange and amusing” (supernatural and bizarre things). Lang published two volumes of his notes, the massive Qixiu leigao and a much shorter sequel called the Qixiu xugao. The passage below is from the “strange and amusing” section of the Qixiu leigao and reflects Lang’s method of consulting a range of sources to try and ascertain the truth. In this case, Lang was investigating the longstanding and oft-repeated belief that southern peoples could drink through their noses (see, e.g., source 2.4 and the section “Drinking through the nose” in source 5.11) and that their heads could detach and fly.

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The Yuan-period poet Chen Fu 陳孚 (1259-1309) went to Annan (Đại Việt) as an envoy and wrote a poem about it that contained the lines, “They drink through noses like pitchers/Their heads fly around like spinning potter’s wheels.”¹ He was presumably saying that the natives could drink through their noses and that their heads flew off at night to eat fish in the sea, returning to the body at dawn. I read in the Luochong ji (Collected Accounts of Naked Creatures)² that the people of Laozhua 老撾³ (Lan Xang) can drink water and other fluids with their noses and that their heads can fly off to eat fish. In recent times, Wang Haiyun could drink through his nose too, but this business of flying heads is strange indeed.⁴ The other day, I read the Xingcha shenglan and it, too, said that the people of Zhancheng (Champa) have persons whose heads can fly.⁵ These are all women, and at night their heads fly off and eat people’s excrement. Some who know of this have sealed off the neck or moved the body, and the woman then died. The book’s author claims to have witnessed this himself.⁶ I looked this up and found out that Zhancheng is directly south of Annan, and Laozhua is directly northwest of Annan. So, we can be sure that Chen’s poem was telling the truth.

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1. Chen Fu traveled to Đại Việt in 1293 and subsequently wrote a description of the country, the Annan jishi 安南紀事 (Record of Annan). ↩︎
2. Probably one of the versions of the Luochong lu (see source 3.14). ↩︎
3. This name is now read as Laowo when used as a name for the state of Laos, but the premodern reading was Laozhua. ↩︎
4. Wang Haiyun 汪海雲, also known as Wang Zhao 汪肇, was a late fifteenth century to early sixteenth century painter who was said to be able to drink wine through his nose. ↩︎
5. See source 4.41. ↩︎
6. In fact, Fei Xin (the author of the Xingcha shenglan) did not claim to have seen a corpse-headed Man: his description begins with the phrase “it is said that” (xiangchuan 相傳). ↩︎