Wangliang
Wangliang (魍魎 or 罔两) is the name of a malevolent spirit in Chinese mythology and folklore. This word inclusively means "demons; monsters; specters; goblins; ghosts; devils" in Modern Standard Chinese, but wangliang originally meant a specific demon. Interpretations include a wilderness spirit like the kui 夔 "one-legged mountain demon", a water spirit like the long 龍 "dragon", a fever demon like the yu 魊 "poisonous 3-legged turtle that causes malaria", a graveyard ghost also called wangxiang 罔象 or fangliang 方良 "earth demon that eats the livers or brains of corpses", and a man-eating "demon that resembles a 3-year-old brown child with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair".
In modern Chinese usage, wangliang "demon; monster" is usually written 魍魎 with radical-phonetic characters combining the "ghost radical" 鬼 (typically used to write words concerning ghosts, demons, etc.) with phonetic elements of wang 罔 and liang 兩 (lit. "decide" and "two"). In Warring States period (475-221 BCE) usage, wangliang was also phonetically transcribed using the character pronunciations wang 罔 and liang 兩, and written 蝄蜽 with the "animal radical" 虫 (used to write names of insects, dragons, etc.) or wangliang 罔閬 using liang 閬 "dry moat" with the "gate radical" 門 (typically used to write architectural terminology). The earliest recorded usages of wangliang in the Chinese classics are: 魍魎 in the (c. 5th-4th century BCE) Guoyu, 罔兩 in the (c. 389 BCE) Zuozhuan, 罔閬 in the (c. 91 BCE) Shiji, and 蝄蜽 in the (121 CE) Shuowen jiezi (or possibly the Kongzi Jiayu of uncertain date).
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