that the terminological confusion arose from the Shuowen jiezi definition of shanhu 珊瑚: 色赤生於海或生於山 "coral is red colored and grows in the ocean or in the mountains". This puzzling description of mountain corals was more likely a textual misunderstanding than a reference to coral fossils. Red langgan The most recent, and least historically documented, identification of langgan is a red gemstone. The Chinese geologist Chang Hung-Chao (Zhang Hongzhao) propagated this explanation when his book about geological terms in Chinese literature identified langgan as malachite, and noted an alternative construal of reddish spinel or balas ruby from the famous mines at Badakhshan. Some authors have cited Chang's balas ruby identification of langgan; others have used, or even confused, it with ruby, in translations (e.g., "precious rubies"). However, Schafer demonstrates that Chang's "supposed" textual evidence for red langgan is tenuous and suggests that Guo Pu's Shanhai jing commentary created this mineralogical confusion. Guo glosses the langgan tree as red, but is unclear whether this refers to the tree itself or its gem-like fruit. Compare Birrell's and Bokenkamp's Shanhai jing translations of "red jade" and "green kernels from scarlet gem trees". Chang misquotes dan'gan 丹矸 "cinnabar rock" from the Xunzi as dan'gan 丹玕 "cinnabar gan", and cites one textual occurrence of the term. The Shangqing Daoist Dadong zhenjing 大洞真經 Authentic Scripture of the Great Cavern records a heavenly palace named Dan'gan dian 丹玕殿 Basilica of the Cinnabar Gan. Admitting the possibility of interpreting gan 玕 as a monosyllabic truncation for langgan 琅玕, comparable with reading hongpo 红珀 for honghupo 红琥珀 "red amber", Schafer concludes there is insufficient dan'gan evidence for an explicit red variety of langgan. The lyrical term langgan occurs 87 times in the huge Quan Tangshi collection of Tang poetry, with only two hong langgen 紅琅玕 "red langgan" usages by the Buddhist monk-poets Guanxiu (831-912) and Ji Qi 齊己 (863-937). Both poems use langgan to describe "red coral", the latter (贈念法華經) uses shanhu in the same line: 珊瑚捶打紅琅玕 "coral beating on red langgan" in cold waters. Dictionary translations Chinese-English dictionaries illustrate the multifaceted difficulties of identifying langgan. Compare the following list. Most of these bilingual Chinese dictionaries cross-reference lang and gan to langgan, but a few translate lang and gan independently. In terms of Chinese word morphology, láng 琅 is a free morpheme that can appear alone (for instance, a surname) or in other compound words (such as fàláng 琺琅 "enamel"