Conotations of Herpts in Chinese Culture

Zach got me interested in looking a bit more on how some of the herpts are viewed in my own culture and I've found out some pretty cool stuff!

So do you all know about the cycle of 12 different animals representing each year? Those are called "Sheng Xiao". If you don't know, I'm attach a picture here showing what they are, and if you are interested, you can find out what animal you belong to in the years given under each picture. In order, they are mouse, cow/ bull/ steer/ heifer/ cattle (there's only one Chinese word for all of them), tiger, rabbit/ bunny (again, same word in Chinese), dragon (the Chinese type, not the western type), SNAKE, horse, sheep/ goat/ ram/ lamb (that's this year; again, same word for all those in Chinese, see the title of this article for a smart-ass Western way to call it lol) , monkey, chicken, dog, and pig.

Those animals, according to folk traditions, or the version I heard as a kid at least, represent the 12 animals that saved human when we were in serious trouble. As you can see, snake is the only herpt represented here, not unless you count dragons of course lol. Naturally, following this logic that they once save human, you'd think they are going to be associated with some good things--wrong!  (By the way, this is slightly off topic, but pretty fun: the whichever animal year you are born in becomes you "Ben Ming Nian" aka "the year of your life", and it comes back every 12 years, and whenever you run into your "Ben Ming Nian," something majorly bad is more likely to happen to you, so you are supposed to wear something red for good luck that whole year lol)

 

In fact, I searched in my brain and checked, not one word or phrase associated with snakes have a good connotation at all. Snakes are associated with deception, cheating, and doing evils. Now that I'm writing about it, I remembered a pretty famous tale telling that once upon a time, an old good-hearted guy saw a dying snake in the snow in the winter. The snake begged (yes, it is a tale..) the old guy to save him and promised he wouldn't hurt him once he recovers, but the old guy hesitated because snakes were known to be evil and full of lies. Nonetheless, the guy gave in to his own kindness, and took the snake home to warm him up. The snake, immediately after his recovery, attacked the kind guy and took his life. The moral of the story was there are creatures or people that are evil to their core; don't ever be kind to them, otherwise they will get you. There was also a popular kids TV series when I grew up (there weren't many back then that are made by China!). It's about... Well, I'll keep the fun memories to myself, but in case you are for some old Chinese kids TV, it's called "葫芦娃," or, 7 Brothers born from bottle gourds that fight the evils and keep peace lol. There were only two bad guys in that show, the guy was a scorpion spirit, and the female, sure enough, was a snake spirit. And the phrase "snake spirit" is usually used to describe a female that is good-looking but evil-hearted.

 

old Chinese kids TV, "葫芦娃," or, 7 Brothers born from bottle gourds that fight the evils and keep peace

"snake spirit" --a female that is good-looking but evil-hearted



The other herpts that occur in Chinese common language are turtles and toads. And those are fun, because the Order Testudines includes two of the worst curse words-- "Wang Ba", which is a way to say softshells, and "bie", which another way to say softshells. But really, nobody uses those for softshells, which you would call "Jia Yu" (number one fish). The bad words are reserved pretty much strictly for people. "Wu Gui" is for turtles and tortoises, but when throwing turtle-related bad words at each other this one can serve some helping function, although by itself it 's not a bad word. The most common bad word is a derivative of "Wang Ba"--it's "Wang Ba  Dan": the egg of a softshell. So apparently, Chinese people are smart, by calling you an egg of a Wang Ba, all your ancestors on your father's sides are automatically WangBas as well, and thus your whole ancestry is automatically insulted. Pretty neat.

 

Despite the derogatory representation of turtles, they actually also represent long-life, and are well respected in certain fantasy tales from older times. This long-living property of properties probably contributed to why people want to eat them and use them for medicine. I do have an idea for conservation though, using old literature that describes the more magical and respectable images of these animals and adding Buddhist believes to perch to people, we should definitely reduce the market!

 

One more thing on turtles, a rich son-in-law is referred to as a "golden turtle son-in-law," which doesn't have any bad connotations at all,  but I thought it's kind of funny since turtle can stand for so many bad things in the bad word world.

 

The connotation on toad was also interested. You should compare Zach's blog and this from Wikipidia for more information. They are pretty self-explanatory. Although, an additional cool point I found out: the palace on the moon (Chinese mythology invloved, look up more info on your own if interested) can also be referred to as "the toad palace," and is often time used in a phrase that means "got good grades in exams". On that note, wish everybody who read (and wrote lol) this blog do well on the exam(s)!