Translated by Giacomo Bruni, this essay by the curator Yuko Hasegawa examines the animation trilogy New Book (or New Classic) of Mountains and Seas, created over twelve years by the Chengdu-born new media artist Qiu Anxiong. Drawing on the ancient Shanhaijing, with its human-faced beasts and hybrid creatures, Qiu uses a mythic visual language and ink-wash aesthetics, combined with 3D imagery, to portray modern civilisation. In Part 1, the struggle over oil and development unfolds as a geographic text: cities replace forests, tanks become elephants and fighter jets become stingray-like monsters, ending in a mushroom cloud observed with eerie calm. Part 2 moves between the cosmic macrocosm and the genetic microcosm, addressing cloning, animal epidemics, dams and waste. Part 3 depicts a post-information future in which environmental degradation has turned nature into a virtual spectacle and everyday devices into cybernetic creatures. The author argues that the trilogy reinterprets technological products mythologically, presenting technology as a modern substitute for mythology and science fiction as “the mythology of the present”, and that it asks what future awaits the environment, traditional values and human civilisation as a whole.