Creatures featured

A new volume brings the beauty and imagination of rare Qing Dynasty natural history encyclopedias to modern-day readers, Wang Kaihao reports.

If you like fantastic beasts, we know where to find them. Wait! We're not talking about the Harry Potter prequels, but the story of Emperor Qianlong's (1711-99) albums of rare birds, exotic beasts and marine animals - which probably deserves to be adapted into a fantasy film as well.

Let's put this idea aside for a moment, and look at the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) emperor's literary collection of fantastic animals housed at the Forbidden City, China's former imperial palace, now officially known as the Palace Museum.