Zhen

The Poison Bird

Snake-eating bird whose feathers poisoned wine, giving Chinese its idiom for fatal remedies.

Zhen is the legendary poison bird that feeds on serpents, its purple-green feathers steeped in wine to make the deadly zhen draft of assassins and suicides. The idiom “drinking zhen wine to quench thirst” condemns any remedy that destroys the one it saves — a bird whose name became a byword for irreversible harm.