Chinese Stone Lions

I have been asked by two students why there are often two stone lions in front of the gates of some buildings which really caught me out of guard. I have been seeing stone lions so often that I never questioned why people put them in front of their doors.

So I went on the internet to look for the answer, as Ben said, everything is “googlable”. The following is what I found:

There was no lions in China originally. The earliest stone lions were sculpted at the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 220 AD) with the introduction of Buddhism into ancient China. In the Buddhist faith, the lion is considered a divine animal of nobleness and dignity, which can protect the Truth and keep off evils.

Lions are symbols of strength, power and dignity. In china, its imagines especially represented power and prestige. A pair of stone lions, a male and a female, can often be seen in front of the gates of traditional buildings. The male lion is on the left with his right paw resting on a ball, and the female on the right with her left paw fondling a cub. The ball played by the male lion symbolized the unity of the empire, and the cub with the female thriving offspring.

The most common material used to carve the lions is stone. But metal lions are also very commonly seen in front of the buildings. ( The photos shown here are taken by me last winter in the Forbidden City of Beijing. Can you tell me which one is male? Which one is female?)

Maybe you have other questions about the stone lions, write to me and I will try my best to answer your questions.

Pigs; good or bad? That is the question!

Last time, I talked about “Dogs in Chinese eyes”. As the pig year is coming, I now will talk about the pig.

A pig ironically has a dual image - both positive and negative in Chinese culture. On one hand, pig represents people who are sloppy, lazy, greedy and dirty. On the other hand, pig also represents good luck and wealth. This year is strongly believed to be the “year of the golden pig” which returns every 60 years. People believe children born this year will be blessed with good luck and financial wealth. As wedding halls were crowded in 2006, maternity hospitals are expected to be packed in 2007.

Despite people’s strong belief about the “year of the golden pig”, all of the limited idioms about pig in Chinese are bad meanings.

Here is the most famous saying about pig in china:
“ren2pa4chu1ming2zhu1pa4zhuang4” which literally means pigs are afraid to be fat and people are afraid to be famous. If pig is fat enough, it will be killed. If a person gets famous, he/she will get involved with a lot of troubles. This saying is deeply rooted in the Chinese philosophy of “zhong1yong1” (the “golden mean” of the Confucian school) which is the way of wisdom and safety between extremes; sufficiency without excess; moderation.

What do pigs represent in your country? Write to us and tell us some stories.

Dogs in Chinese eyes

For western calendar, it is already a new year. But for most traditional Chinese, our time is still lingering around the end of the year of the Dog. Dog is always loved by foreigners. You can tell by looking at the English idioms about dogs:
“Big dog” which means very important person.
“Love me, love my dog” which means if you love someone, you should accept everything and everyone that person loves.

Well, in china, dogs don’t have so good reputation. The idioms in Chinese about dogs are normally bad:
Gou3ji2tiao4qiang2 which literally means an irritated dog will jump over the wall. Now it is normally used to describe that a desperate person will do anything or something dangerous.
Gou3zui3li3tu3bu2chu1xiang4ya2 which literally means that it’s impossible for a dog to spit out an ivory. Now it is normally used to describe that a bad person has filthy mouth and he can’t say anything decent.

There are still a lot more idioms about dogs in Chinese. Though none of them has good meaning but at least that means dogs are still very close to people’s life. Now do you think you know more about the dogs in Chinese eyes? My next blog will be about the next year’s animal: “pig”, the controversial animal. Do you think piggy is cute? Do you think piggy is dirty? Wait for my next blog.