The Four Great Malevolent Beasts of antiquity are Taotie, Hundun, Qiongqi and Taowu.

The Four Great Malevolent Beasts of antiquity is the collective name for four famous fierce beasts in ancient Chinese mythology, generally referring to Taotie, Hundun, Qiongqi and Taowu. The notion of the four malevolent ones had already taken shape in pre-Qin texts such as the Zuo Zhuan, where it originally referred to several clan leaders of antiquity who committed evil deeds; later it gradually merged with the images of strange beasts depicted in books such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Shenyi Jing, forming the widely circulated combination of the Four Great Malevolent Beasts known today.

In terms of appearance, each of the four beasts has its own characteristics. Taotie is famous for its extreme gluttony, and its beast-face motif is commonly found on Shang and Zhou bronzes, where it is often regarded as the embodiment of greed; Qiongqi resembles a fierce tiger but has wings, and legend says it specifically opposes the loyal and good while instead sheltering evildoers, symbolizing the inversion of right and wrong; Hundun is portrayed as a divine beast with a round, shapeless body and no facial features or openings at all, representing benighted ignorance; Taowu is shaped like a fierce tiger, of a violent and stubborn temperament that is hard to tame, and is mostly used as a metaphor for the obstinately unreformable.

Compared with the Four Auspicious Creatures such as the dragon, phoenix, lin and turtle, which symbolize good fortune, the Four Great Malevolent Beasts carry more of a cautionary and admonitory meaning. The ancients used them to criticize human weaknesses such as greed, ignorance, ferocity and stubbornness, and these names remain active in Chinese expression to this day; for example, taotie is used to describe gluttony or a scene of fine food, and taowu is used to describe a person who will not mend their ways despite repeated instruction.

It should be noted that regarding the specific members and images of the Four Great Malevolent Beasts, the records of dynastic classics are not entirely consistent, and folk interpretations as well as settings in literature, film, television and games each elaborate in their own way. When reading related material, it is worth distinguishing the original texts from later creations in order to understand more accurately their place in the Chinese mythological system.