Every Chinese Sleep Story So Far | Nearly Two Hours of Slow Whispered Folk Tales (Shan Hai Jing) - Video

Nine stories from the oldest book of mountains and seas — and a few that were written down later, by people who could not stop thinking about it. Told slowly, one after another, for the length of a night.

Nothing in here is sudden. No music rises, nothing jumps out, nobody is chased. Before each story there is a short spoken note about where it comes from; after each one, a little rain while you settle. You do not have to follow any of it. Let the voice keep going after you stop listening.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:28 The Beast That Knew Every Secret (Bai Ze)
18:01 The Bird That Filled the Sea (Jingwei)
31:46 Every River Is the Handwriting of a Dragon (Yinglong)
40:52 When It Opens Its Eyes, Morning Comes (Zhulong)
50:42 Why Was the Nine-Tailed Fox Never Really a Monster?
61:43 No Eyes, No Face, Yet It Dances (Dijiang)
72:42 It Takes You at Your Word (Qiongqi)
82:52 Why Was the Taotie Never Really a Monster?
93:42 The Stone Monkey Who Became King

WHERE THESE COME FROM
Bai Ze, Jingwei, Yinglong, Zhulong, Dijiang, Qiongqi and the Taotie all appear in the Shan Hai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), with further notes in the Lü Shi Chun Qiu and Qu Yuan's Heavenly Questions. The nine-tailed fox story draws on the Shan Hai Jing and the Wu Yue Chun Qiu. The stone monkey comes from Journey to the West. All of these texts have been in the public domain for centuries, which is why they can still be told tonight, this way.

The narration is a slow synthesized (AI) voice, and the artwork in this video is AI-generated. There are no music stingers, no sudden sounds, and nothing louder than a whisper anywhere in the recording.

More of these old tales, one at a time: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepydragontales

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