Zhang, the Extended Net of the Vermilion Bird

Zhang, the Extended Net, is the twenty-sixth of the twenty-eight xiu and the fifth mansion of the southern palace, the Vermilion Bird. Its name refers to a drawn bow-net or the bird's crop, identified with stars in Hydra. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Deer. As one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it tracks a segment of the Moon's monthly path. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu order the heavens into four palaces of seven mansions each, the Vermilion Bird gathering the mansions the almanac assigns to summer. The bird's body is spread across these southern mansions, from the Well at its wing to the Chariot at its tail.

Zhang's bow-net or crop imagery continues the bird-body naming convention that runs through the whole southern palace, from Jing at the wing through Xing at the neck to this mansion nearer the tail, a consistency of figure across seven consecutive stations matched, in the eastern palace, by the dragon's horn-neck-root-chamber-heart-tail sequence and, in the northern palace, by the tortoise-and-serpent imagery running through Dou to Bi, showing all four Chinese palaces were composed with the same deliberate body-part logic rather than assembled as unrelated lists.