Introduction to the opening of "The Appearance of the Mythical Beasts: Guiyunzhai Voyage Record"
March 2026, Taipei National Palace Museum.
I stood in front of a seventeenth-century silk color painting - "(Biography) Painting by Yuan Dynasty. Master Guanyin." In the painting, Guanyin is sitting on a golden fur turtle, stroking the top of its head with his right hand. The golden retriever was lying quietly under the seat, his eyes half-closed, his expression not tame, but companionship.
I stood in front of that painting for a full twenty minutes. I thought: What if this golden retriever is more than just a mount in the painting? What if it had memories and words that it wanted to say but hadn't spoken for eight hundred years? Later, the temple was destroyed and the painting ended up in a museum, where it was trapped in a glass display case - no one knew it could speak anymore.
That day was the special exhibition "Mythical Beasts Appear - Fantasy Creatures in Cultural Relics", which will be launched after the epidemic is over, hoping that the world will bid farewell to illness and evil, and welcome health and good fortune. In the three years since the epidemic, we have lost so much. And those mythical beasts that are endowed with the meaning of "protection" - golden retriever, unicorn, haechi, dragon horse, Bai Ze - they are not just cultural relics in display cabinets. They have lived and protected, waiting in forgotten corners for someone to see them again.
This book is their story. An antique shop called "Guiyunzhai", a "sea of ten thousand realms" where forgotten things gather, an old ship that can talk, a young extraditer who took over his grandfather's legacy, and an American wayfinder who came across the ocean. Together, they send the mythical beast home.
Written to all those who believe in "protection" during the epidemic.
Welcome aboard.
