The Legend of Five Goats

Lore & Background

According to the legend, ancient Guangzhou suffered a prolonged drought and food shortage. One day, a holy melody and a five-colour cloud appeared from the South China Sea. Five gods, each wearing different coloured clothing and riding a different coloured goat, descended holding sheaves of wheat with six stalks. They gave the wheat to the people, left the five goats, and departed by cloud. The people planted the grains, after which Guangzhou enjoyed regular winds, rains, and rich harvests. The five goats turned to stone on a hill, giving rise to the city's nicknames.

Ancient records trace the legend to the Jin dynasty, when Pei Yuan wrote in Guangzhou Ji. The Taiping Yulan (Northern Song, 983) describes images of five goats on Guangzhou's court hall beam, with grain bags hanging beneath, and notes a tradition that when Gao Gu was Prime Minister of Chu, five goats brought grain to Chu. The Taiping Huanyu Ji (984) records an old saying of five gods riding five-colour goats with six grains. The earliest Jin version lacks gods; gods appeared later due to Taoism's popularity in the Northern and Southern dynasties.

After the Tang dynasty, 'Five Goats' and 'City of the Goat' became nicknames for Guangzhou. By the Southern Han, a 'Five Gods Taoist temple' was built. In the Northern Song, Zhang Li recorded the legend in Rebuilding the Five Gods Temple of Guangzhou, quoting earlier works to specify that five gods each held a wheat with six stalks, rode five goats of different colours, and after leaving the wheat, the gods flew away and the goats became stone. The specific time of the legend varies: Taiping Yulan gives two versions (Chu period and Teng Xiu's time in the Three Kingdoms); Zhang Li gives three (Zhao Tuo's Han period, Teng Xiu's Wu period, and Guo Pu's Jin period); Guangdong Xinyu (late Ming/early Qing) places it during King Yi of Zhou, a version similar to the modern one.

Reader's Guide

The Legend of Five Goats holds deep significance as a cultural origin myth for Guangzhou, shaping the city's identity through its nicknames and local brand names. Its inclusion in the 2007 first batch of Guangzhou's oral and intangible heritage underscores its enduring value. The legend reflects historical interpretations of migration and cultural exchange: historian Ceng Zhongmian in 1948 proposed it as a pre-historical colonial myth, suggesting that at the end of the Western Zhou, Ji people moved south to Lingnan with goats and wheat, symbolizing the spread of Zhongyuan culture. Modern studies see multiple historical events embedded in the legend, such as Chu people bringing high-producing rice to Lingnan, Ji people immigrating with goats and grains, or Gao Gu's family bringing rice to Guangzhou. Alternatively, some scholars argue that 'goats' in Chu dialect means 'dogs', and the legend adapts a Zhuang, Dong, or Nanyue story of 'The Dogs Get Rice', later revised by Zhongyuan intellectuals. The legend's physical legacy includes the Five Gods Taoism Temple in Guangzhou, which moved several times from the Northern Song onward, was rebuilt in the Ming and Qing, and after the Republic of China period was nationalized and opened to the public in the 1980s. It now houses statues of the five gods with five goats, worshipped as 'Gods for Grains'. The temple was listed as a Protected Historic Site of Guangzhou in 1963 and of Guangdong in 1989.

Did You Know?

• The earliest written record of the legend is from the Jin dynasty, in Pei Yuan's essay Guangzhou Ji.
• The legend was unified after the Ming dynasty, with earlier versions varying in details such as the presence of gods.
• Some scholars argue that 'goats' in the legend actually means 'dogs' in Chu dialect, linking it to a Zhuang and Dong minority story.

The Core Narrative of the Legend

In ancient Guangzhou, a devastating multi-year drought left the population on the brink of starvation. According to the legend, the crisis was broken when a divine melody filled the air and a five-coloured cloud drifted in from the South China Sea. Riding that cloud arrived five gods, each dressed in a different colour, each mounted on a goat of a matching hue. In their hands they carried sheaves of wheat, each containing exactly six stalks. The deities bestowed the grain upon the suffering people, then departed on the clouds, leaving behind the five goats. The locals scattered the seeds across the earth, and from that moment onward Guangzhou enjoyed steady winds, dependable rains, and abundant harvests. The five goats, meanwhile, transformed into stone figures that still stand upon a local hill. This single mythic episode is credited as the source of the city's enduring nicknames and its deep association with rice cultivation.

A Legend That Evolved Across Dynasties

The written trail of the Five Goats story stretches back to the Jin Dynasty, when the scholar Pei Yuan referenced it in his essay Guangzhou Ji. By the Northern Song, the compendium Taiping Yulan (983) quoted that text, describing painted images of the five goats on a court-hall beam with grain bags hung beneath them. The same source also cited a Tang-dynasty work, Junguo Zhi, which tied the episode to the Three Kingdoms figure Teng Xiu. A crucial detail emerges from comparing these early records: the Jin-era version contains no gods at all—the goats themselves are the protagonists. The divine riders only entered the narrative later, a shift scholars attribute to the rise of Taoism during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Over subsequent centuries the legend was further elaborated. In the Northern Song, military commissioner Zhang Li produced a complete account in his text on rebuilding the Five Gods Temple, citing older sources to add specificity about the gods' coloured garments and the six-stalk wheat. By the late Ming and early Qing, Qu Dajun's Guangdong Xinyu placed the event in the time of King Yi of Zhou, a framing that closely mirrors the version told today.

Shaping a City's Identity

Few myths have seeped so thoroughly into a city's everyday vocabulary as the Five Goats legend has into Guangzhou. The story is the direct source of the city's most beloved nicknames—City of Five Goats, City of the Goat, and City of the Rice—and it has also lent its imagery to numerous local commercial brand names. The legend's cultural footprint is visible in Tang-dynasty poetry, where the goat motif appears as a literary allusion to the city. Religious and civic practices grew around the myth: during the Tang, worshippers sacrificed five goats in Town God temples, and the Southern Han dynasty erected dedicated Five Gods Taoist temples at the site where the deities were said to have alighted. In the Northern Song, Zhang Li documented that the temple's purpose was to memorialise that very landing place. The legend's significance was formally recognised in 2007 when it was included in the first batch of Guangzhou's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, cementing its status as a cornerstone of the city's living cultural memory.

Reading the Myth as History

From the twentieth century onward, scholars began treating the Five Goats legend less as pure fantasy and more as a coded record of real migration. In 1948, the historian Ceng Zhongmian proposed that the story is fundamentally a pre-historical colonial myth. His reasoning was geographic and agricultural: goats were the characteristic livestock of northwestern Zhongyuan, while Guangzhou sits far to the south, and the 'wheat' the gods carried actually represents rice—the staple crop of the central plains. Ceng argued the legend encodes a specific event at the close of the Western Zhou, when Ji people, fleeing Chu oppression, migrated southward along the Xiang River into Lingnan, bringing their goats and grain with them and spreading both across southern China over the following years. Modern scholarship builds on this, noting that the Chu royal surname 'Mi' (芈) carries the same semantic root as 'Baa' (咩), the onomatopoeic bleat of a goat, further linking the myth to Chu cultural transmission into the south.