Orient and Oxident
Jan. 26th, 2009 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatGood evening, and welcome to the year 4705! Or is it the year 4645? That depends on whether you believe the calendar begins with the birth or the ascension to the throne of the legendary Yellow Emperor Huang-di. Really, the idea of a continuous calendar was a Western one, with the Chinese calendar originally conceived as a cyclical one, and I think everyone agrees that this is the Year of the Ox.
While I know what an ox looks like, I was never quite sure how they were biologically classified. As it turns out, it's actually a term denoting occupation rather than species; an ox is a bovine used as a draft animal, and is often castrated. In Vietnam, they use a water buffalo in this place on the zodiac.
Anyway, we Americans all know about the Chinese zodiac from the menus that they have at every single Chinese restaurant, which inform you that you're most compatible with people several years apart in age from you. But just as Western astrology has rules about the Moon and the planets that I've never bothered to learn, the Chinese years are also associated with the five elements (which, in turn, are also the names for the five closest planets) and either yin or yang. So this is actually the Year of the Yin Earth Ox, while I am a Yin Fire Snake, which I believe looks something like this:
I suppose it should come as no surprise that, to me, the most interesting aspect of Chinese New Year traditions is the Nian (literally meaning "year"), a ravenous monster that was said to come above ground to feed at the time of the new year. The people would scare it away by making noise and prominently displaying the color red, or give it food so it wouldn't feel the need to eat the children. Maybe in modern China, they could scare it away with rap music.
It's also Australia Day, but there aren't any monsters associated with that, as far as I know. Maybe Australian fauna is weird enough that the people don't have to bother making up their own creatures.
While I know what an ox looks like, I was never quite sure how they were biologically classified. As it turns out, it's actually a term denoting occupation rather than species; an ox is a bovine used as a draft animal, and is often castrated. In Vietnam, they use a water buffalo in this place on the zodiac.
Anyway, we Americans all know about the Chinese zodiac from the menus that they have at every single Chinese restaurant, which inform you that you're most compatible with people several years apart in age from you. But just as Western astrology has rules about the Moon and the planets that I've never bothered to learn, the Chinese years are also associated with the five elements (which, in turn, are also the names for the five closest planets) and either yin or yang. So this is actually the Year of the Yin Earth Ox, while I am a Yin Fire Snake, which I believe looks something like this:
I suppose it should come as no surprise that, to me, the most interesting aspect of Chinese New Year traditions is the Nian (literally meaning "year"), a ravenous monster that was said to come above ground to feed at the time of the new year. The people would scare it away by making noise and prominently displaying the color red, or give it food so it wouldn't feel the need to eat the children. Maybe in modern China, they could scare it away with rap music.
It's also Australia Day, but there aren't any monsters associated with that, as far as I know. Maybe Australian fauna is weird enough that the people don't have to bother making up their own creatures.
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Date: 2009-01-28 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 06:27 am (UTC)Among the other things I learned that day: I am really bad at eating duck with chopsticks.