pig in the middle

Yesterday marked the start of a new year, the year of the pig. I’ve written previously about how pigs tend to be viewed in a negative light in Western culture, but this is not the case in China. In fact, people born in a year of the pig are seen in an extremely positive light:

Pigs are diligent, compassionate and generous. They have great focus, but they never suspect trickery, so they are easily fooled. They are relatively calm when facing trouble. No matter how difficult the problems that they encounter, they can handle things properly and carefully. They have a great sense of responsibility.

Of course, I don’t believe any of this nonsense, but if you really want to strain my credulity, remind me that superimposed on the cycle of twelve zodiac animals is the cycle of the five elements, and this is a year of the earth pig. All this allegedly affects the personality, but if having twelve animals is an arbitrary number, then the designation of five elements is completely untenable.

The only reason for there to be five ‘elements’ is that it is impossible to construct a lo shu square (a magic square in Western mathematics) with any other number in the centre. And although earth, fire and water coincide with three of the elements designated by the ancient Greeks, Chinese astrologers failed to identify air as an element, instead deciding that wood and metal are elements. Now I can understand the Greek system, because all four Greek elements are elemental, but I would judge wood to be an earth/water hybrid and metal to be a combination of earth and fire. In other words, they are not elemental but have been included because of the need to fit a lo shu square, which is the basis of fung shui.

However, despite my skepticism, I can still enjoy the festivities associated with a new year. I had planned to include some photos of exploding firecrackers at this point, but for reasons that I’m unaware of, we didn’t have any this year, so I’ve included a photo of my neighbour’s firecracker vine, which is at its best for several years:

We did have a lion dance though, and for the first time ever, I was asked to help to bring the lions to life:

The process involves placing a little dab of red ink on the right eye, left eye, forehead, mouth and back—in that order.

When the dance was over, I was asked whether I would like to try my hand at ‘playing’ the big bass drum that is the principal accompaniment to the dance. I think that the dance troupe’s sifu (behind me in the next two photos) was impressed by my attempts to juggle the drumsticks while playing!

These photos were taken by friends whom I’d invited because they had never previously seen a lion dance performed ‘live’. The gweilo in the third photo is my cousin Dave, who is staying with us for a few weeks.

I didn’t take any photos of the lion dance, but I did shoot an extended video, which I will need to edit before posting it on YouTube (with a link here). Meanwhile, here are some stills from that video:

I will close with a traditional salutation for Chinese New Year:

Kung hei fat choy.

It doesn’t mean ‘happy new year’ but is a wish that you will be prosperous in the coming year, which, to remind you, will be the year of the pig.

Oink! Oink!