#Chinese parable

[volleypearlfan]

Did you know? The farmer and the horse story told in "The Sign" is a real Chinese parable. It promotes the Taoist views on good and bad luck.

Long ago, there was a widowed Chinese farmer. The farmer and his only son labored through the cold winds of winter and scorching rays of summer with their last remaining horse. One day, the son didn’t lock the gate of the stable properly, and the horse bolted away.  When neighbors learned what happened, they came to the farmer and said, “What a sadness this is! Without your horse, you’ll be unable to maintain the farm. What a failure that your son did not lock the gate properly! This is a great tragedy!” The farmer replied, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

[thisnoah]

@braisedhoney *汉服-ifies your narrator*

I had no choice, I thought his jacket was like a 袍服 and then my ancestors suddenly held me at gunpoint as I drew

[yeenstation]

my headcanon is that Stanley from The Stanley Parable works in the Chinese room

[sethian123]

Two Mountains Crumbling in Daylight

(Manichaean poem inspired by the old Chinese parable: "The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains")

Eons ago, near two flowing rivers in old China

Lived an old, white clothed man ninety-nine years of age

Who glared at two mountains he knew from his long-dead childhood

Who glared at the giants he always had dreams of

The first was a mist covered mountain, where all beasts were blind

With whispers of meaningless legends and theories

The second was a fiery mountain singing in passion

With trees and bushes with golden leaves, but no fruit

Both these mountains trapped the souls of the damned under the dirt

Both buried the light in the damp cyclical tomb

The souls were angels who defended their land from the night

Horsemen who guarded against the Prince of Darkness

The inner soul of light within the old man awakened

The youthful hoopoe bird within chirped for freedom

He began his work, to dig into the mountains themselves

He started to craft a path for all to travel

A wiser old man came up and saw the sweat raining down

And chuckled at the absurdity raining down

“Oh friend, you cannot remove one grey hair from the giants

How in heaven’s name can you crumble these mountains”

The foolish grey-haired man, singing and young in his caged heart

Said these words, roaring with his liberated mind

“My children shall tear the mountains by their blood-covered hand

My grandchildren shall destroy them with their chisels

My offspring will fight as unsleeping armies in the night

My offspring will never surrender their grand fight

The birds of the blue sky will peck the mountains piece by piece

The worms of earth will eat the fortress bit by bit”

These words reached the wise man’s inner heart beating with wonder

These words reached the sun and moon’s delicate bright souls

So the ships of light carried the message to the blue sky

The Infinite Father of Greatness and Lightness

The blue sky ripped apart the revolving grey clouds of might

The expanse of azure blue split all into two

Daylight shone in the highest firmament of dark violet

Daylight shone in the lowest crannies of Sheol

These two mountains vanished as if they were nothing at all

These two watchtowers crumbled in the gentle flames

Leaving no fortresses between the two flowing rivers

Leaving only an untouched garden, eons old

[ask-stanley-from-the-parable]

Are we the first people you’ve ever talked to? Is your first time talking to new people mostly a hostile experience?

... Yes? Is it not meant to be?

[dukeofriven]

I've seen the post go around and around now and I finally got mad enough about it to respond, because it is the usual Tumblr made-up-crap-masqerading-as-fact that I so hate. Sun-Tzu never said any of this shit. Like I get it, I get it - none of you dummies know shit about classical Chinese literature, and you'll just parrot anything that sounds vaguely portentous with a 'ancient philosopher' name slapped on it, but you know that even through the haze of modern english translation this is total nonsense, right? It's idiotic? Sun-Tzu only ever mentions dual-wielding once and he does so only in the context of clarifying how having a gun with a sword on it is "sick biznasty as hell" [in the original it's '이것은 일본어입니다' Line 13 Verse 4 in Book Six of the Art of War], and that if you have two of them your enemy is uniquely ill-prepared to get 'shot-sliced up the shizzle like a motherfucker.'

"dual wielding is too dangerous and impractical to be effective in real life combat" dual wielding is cool and sexy and sick as fuck and he who makes his enemy look like a lame little punk ass loser has already won half the battle before he even starts fighting the war. sun tzu said that.

[wisdomfish]

Verbal Transmission

Anyone who has played Chinese whispers knows that verbal transmission can go horribly wrong! Certain scholars in the past assumed that parts of the Bible were subject to years of verbal transmission before being written down, the assumption being that many details would have changed in the interim. To this charge, two points should be made.

Firstly, the ancient powers of verbal transmission were amazing. We tend to forget this in our modern world of PCs, photocopiers, and the printed page. Early Muslims memorized over 6,000 verses of the Qur'an accurately and many still do today. Powers of memory are increased further when teachings are composed in easily memorable forms, as were Jesus' parables, for instance.

Secondly, there simply was no long chain of verbal transmission for most of the Bible. Scholars tended to assume that the gospels as we have them were not written down until the second century or later, therefore requiring long periods of a verbal transmission. This is not the case, as later scholarship has shown. The gospels were either the products of eyewitnesses [13] or those who knew the eyewitnesses.[14] Furthermore, Paul's letters were direct literary compositions and the prophetic books would have been composed by the prophets themselves. Even books spanning long sections of history were composed largely from earlier written sources.[15]

~ Mark Pickering, Peter Saunders 

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Reference: Alchemy

Some scholars say alchemy comes from the Greek cheo, meaning “I pour” or “I cast,” since much of alchemy has to do with the working of metals.

But many believe the word comes from the Egyptian Khem, meaning “the black land” (land with black earth), and see that as indicating Egypt as alchemy’s place of origin:

The Arabic article al was added to Khem to give alchemy.

Alchemy is an ancient art, at the heart of which lies the manufacture of a mysterious substance called the Philosopher’s Stone.

Later, as the science (some call it a pseudoscience) progressed, the article was again dropped, to become chemistry.

Alchemy certainly is the early history of chemistry.

The Philosopher's Stone - the highly desirable and legendary object that is said to transform base metals—such as lead—into gold.

However, the gold in this instance symbolizes not just the valuable metal, but enlightenment and eternal life, and Alchemists are concerned with their own spiritual and personal development as well as the pursuit of the seemingly unattainable goal.

The Chinese differentiate these different kinds of alchemy as nei-tan (the alchemy of spiritual transformation) and waitan (the straightforward “lead-into-gold” type).

The motto of the Alchemists is Solve et Coagula, meaning “Solution and Coagulation.”

The work of the early Alchemists was necessarily a secretive and clandestine matter, and its secrets are still held within a rich encrustation of symbols, pictures, oblique references, double meanings, and riddles.

Alchemical symbolism features animals, birds, colors, and parables as well as archetypal symbols such as the Cosmic Egg.

The key tenets of alchemy are encompassed in something called the Smaragdina Tablet, or the Emerald Tablet.

The tablet is said to have been found by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice Great) who is the founder of all things alchemical.

The Alchemical Tradition exists/existed in Ancient Egypt, China, and India, but its most recent incarnation was in medieval Europe.

Those who dabbled in alchemy include the famous and the infamous, such as John Dee (astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I), Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Christian Rosenkreuz, Nicholas Flamel, and Isaac Newton.

Some of the chemical treatises are befuddling to even the most learned of scholars, but the very word “alchemy” is almost in itself a symbol, conjuring up images that are magical, mystical, and marvelous.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[ryin-silverfish]

Ghost Month Special: Heibai Wuchang

Today is the middle of Lunar Seventh Month, a.k.a. Zhongyuan Festival, and I feel like there can't be a more appropriate day to do a deep dive on my favorite ghost cops, a.k.a. the Black and White Impermanences, a.k.a. Seventh and Eighth Master, a.k.a. Tua Di Ya Pek, a.k.a. Xie Bi'an & Fan Wujiu.

Now, I've talked briefly about them in my Chinese Underworld post, and if you watch C-dramas or play certain Chinese games, you might have seen these two + learned a few things about them already. But for those who haven't, here's the five-minute summary:

-they are (one variant of ) Chinese psychopomps, who show up to take the souls of the deceased to the Underworld.

-they are also ghost cops, who go after troublesome ghosts that are disturbing the living.

-both wear tall hats with four characters on it (which also varied), as well as nearly identical black and white robes.

-for their Hokkien, Taiwanese and SEA versions, there's a significant height difference between the two; the white-robed one is tall and skinny, while the black-robed one is short and stout.

-the White Impermanence is often depicted with his tongue hanging out of his mouth (reminiscent of those who died by hanging) and a more cheerful expression, while the Black Impermanence is dark/blue-faced (reminiscent of death by drowning) and relatively more grim and fierce.

-the White Impermanence is also worshipped as a god of wealth by some.

However, outside of these bullet points, their tales and trajectory of development are a fascinating rabbit hole. I'd call them thorough folk gods, who evolved out of the greater existing character archetype of "ghost bureaucrats fetching people to the Underworld" and became their own unique characters almost entirely through folklore and oral legends.

So, without further ado, let's dive in.

Impermanence

The Great Spectre of Impermanence could arrive unexpectedly. (无常大鬼，不期而到) ——Sutra of Ksitigarbha's Fundamental Vows

To start talking about these two, we need to go into the general category of beings they separated out of later: Underworld officials.

Some conceptions of those petty ghost bureaucrats that mirrored living ones already existed in the Han dynasty; in burial goods and "grave scripts", there were paperwork dedicated to those officials, who were supposed to keep track of the Dead People Belongings List and maintain the segregation between the dead and the living.

Their characterization would get expanded a lot as time went on, in Northern-Southern dynasty and Tang legends, but this isn't an article about the ghost officials as a whole.

We are still tracing the origins of two specific ones, and to do that, we have to start with etymology——the "Wuchang" in their names.

It is the translation of the Buddhist concept of "Anitya", referring to the impermanence of everything, which is always changing and dying and being reborn, with no constant to be found.

Yeah, you can see why a word describing the fleeting nature of life might eventually become associated with death and native psychopomps at some point in the Northern-Southern dynasty.

In the 39 chapter translation of the Dhammapada (interlaced with additional parables) by Fa Ju and Fa Li, the "Killing Spectre of Impermanence" (无常杀鬼) was first mentioned in the "On Impermanence" (无常品) chapter.

Another name for this grim-reaper-esque figure was "The Great Spectre of Impermanence", which appears in the quote at the beginning.

It appeared earlier than Ksitigarbha's Sutra, though: in another Northern-Southern dynasty translation of the Sutra of Golden Light, a Great Spectre of Impermanence was mentioned as this scary being that swallowed a king's younger son up whole.

By the Tang dynasty, the Spectre of Impermanence had appeared in both poetry and Buddhist text collections, as a generic name for the ghost that came to get you when you die.

However, the name wasn't exactly common or widespread, as made evident by all the N & S. dynasty and Tang legends about ghost bureaucrats where they were just referred to as, well, ghost bureaucrats.

Similarly, the Scripture on the Ten Kings doesn't mention anything about a Spectre of Impermanence. Instead, the second variant of the sutra says there are 3 ghosts working under King Yama——the "Soul-seizing Ghost" (夺魂鬼), "Essence-seizing Ghost" (夺精鬼), and "Spirit-binding Ghost" (缚魄鬼), responsible for dragging souls away in chains to the tree near the Underworld entrance pass.

(Their names might have corresponded to the idea of the Three Souls, each grabbing one of them, or the alternate division of Hun-Po plus the "vital force/essence".)

Right after that, however, they mentioned two demonic-looking birds sitting on the tree, one of which was named the "Bird of Impermanence", who would angrily scold and torment the dead for their misdeeds.

In this text, whatever the birds were, they were seen as a separate thing from the 3 ghosts that brought the souls of the dead to the Underworld entrance.

(A brief tangent about the 2 variants of the Ten Kings Scripture: the first could be found in the Dunhuang manuscripts, its name was 佛说预修十王生七经, and, as Teiser's translation of the scripture at the end of his academic book has showned, didn't have the 3 ghosts or the birds.)

(The variant mentioned above is 地藏菩萨发心因缘十王经, which is likely a Song dynasty Japanese apocrypha based on the first variant.)

Buddy Ghost Cops

When the ghostly officials of the Tang legends showed up, they could be alone, in pairs or in groups.

It was only in the Song-Yuan era that the idea of ghost cops showing up in pairs began to populate, and the first mention of the "Two Spectres of Impermanence" appeared in Vol. 3 of the Song dynasty 随隐漫录.

However, even without the word "Impermanence" attached, in various Song texts, the idea of there being 2 ghosts coming to get you instead of a single one or a group had already showed up with more frequency than before.

Come Ming dynasty, the Two Spectres of Impermanence got even more notable mentions in vernacular novels: a descriptive poem in Chapter 115 of Water Margins brings them up alongside the "Generals of the Five Paths" (五道将军), another native Underworld deity that showed up in Tang novels.

Plum in the Golden Vase, a.k.a. "that one Ming classic novel that often got censored and un-classic-ed because of its graphic sexual content", also has a folk Precious Scroll singing session (a story within a story, basically) that mentioned them.

In this story, King Yama sent a pair of "Impermanence Spectres" after Lady Huang, the protagonist of the scroll, who were also referred to as "Divine Boys/Acolytes of Good and Evil".

Now, the Boy-Acolytes of Good and Evil (善恶童子) were a pair of existing Underworld deities that had appeared in Dunhuang manuscripts and Ksitigarbha-themed artworks, responsible for recording the good and bad deeds of people respectively.

Their first mention was in the Tang translation of Surangama Sutra, and according to the second variant of the Ten Kings Scripture, the one recording bad deeds was said to look like a Raksha, while the one responsible for good deeds just looked like a regular divine acolyte.

Plum in the Golden Vase might have briefly aluded to that quirk too, in the story-within-a-story, where it was said that "Good people are welcomed by the acolyte(s), while bad people get the Yaksha(s)".

In the earlier Song dynasty compendium, Yijian Zhi, there are also mentions of two kids leading a fortunate guy's soul out of the Underworld, as well as showing up to inform some guy's wife that her days were numbered.

The second story is kinda funny, because after she had pretty much rolled over and accepted her fate, the two kids suddenly returned and were like "Excuse me, was Zhao your maiden name, or your husband's?"

Upon being informed that it was the latter case, they were like "Dangit, almost got the wrong person." Immediately after they left, another woman in the neighborhood whose surname was actually Zhao died.

Both stories do not use the specific name of "Acolytes of Good & Evil" for them, though, nor are they described as recorders of good and evil deeds.

For all I know, these two kids could be just like the pair of "young boys in blue robes" (青衣童子) who led Taizong into the Ghost Gate and the Underworld proper in JTTW Chapter 11: generic ghost workers.

But in Plum in the Golden Vase at least, they seemed to have been absorbed into the larger category of the Impermanence Ghosts, even though the Impermanence Ghosts still weren't their own characters yet, or gained any iconic uniforms.

Rather, it's more that 1) the catch-all name of "Impermanence" has become somewhat widespread for the generic ghost cops, though not yet universal, and 2) the Underworld apparently has a buddy-cop system in place now, where there had to be two ghostly officials for every newly dead person.

Psychopomp Outsourcing

In the late Ming and Qing dynasty, we got another twist on the Wuchang thing: Zou Wuchang, literally "Walk as Impermanences".

I've talked before about the early version of Taizong's trip to the Underworld, where Cui Jue/Ziyu, instead of being posthumously made a ghost judge, was a living official working part-time for the Underworld.

Well, Zou Wuchang is similar, but less prestigious, and you don't get paid either. The Underworld is short of hands (somehow), so they just grab a random living person and be like "Go fetch dead people for us."

The earliest mention of such a tradition in the Ming dynasty 语怪 placed the custom in Fengdu, the famous "ghost city" of Sichuan.

According to the text, when someone's soul was yanked off its streets to work as part-time psychopomps, they just fainted on the spot, and would revive after a few hours or overnight. The phenomenon was so common, the locals weren't even shocked, nor bothered getting them any medical attention.

Yuewei Caotang Biji goes further into the rationales of why Underworld needed those living conscripts. Apparently, all the living people clustered around a sickbed created a blazing aura of Yang, which certain venerable/fierce/brutish individuals also possessed in abundance, and was anathema to the ghost cops.

They were beings of pure Yin, after all, while the conscripts, whose bodies were Yin but still had plenty of Yang-aligned Qi, didn't have to worry about that.

Zou Wuchang was also not gender-exclusive, and there were mentions of multiple female conscripts in Qing legend compendiums.

Also, though the recruitment was forceful, you could actually retire after serving for a number of years——in one tale from 庸闲斋笔记, a woman fought the conscript for her mother-in-law's soul, who took pity on her and reported back to the City God.

In response, the City God said he'd send a report to Yama to see if she could be spared, and also released the conscript from her duty on account of her kind heart.

The popularity of this tradition across multiple sources and a long stretch of time signalled that, to an even greater extent than before, the ghost cops weren't generic ghost cops no longer: they are The Impermanences, which is only a few step away from developing into their own characters with unique iconography.

Black and White

First: where did their signature robe colors come from?

According to the first variant of the Ten Kings Scripture, officials under the Ten Kings were supposed to be dressed in black robes, riding a black horse, and carrying a black banner.

But in Tang folklore compendiums, that dress code wasn't a thing at all. A Taiwanese paper actually goes through tales of ghost officials inside Taiping Guangji where their appearances were described, and counted 22 cases of them wearing yellow robes, 7 cases of red robes, and only 8 stories involving ghost officials in either black or white robes.

Though ghost officials in black as well as white robes never appeared in the same story, they did have two things in common: 1) they tended to be quite tall, and 2) almost half of them were carrying weapons of some sorts.

The very late Ming/early Qing novel, Cu Hulu, also has a character ask Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha a bunch of questions in Chapter 12.

One of them was about the discrepancy between the depiction of Underworld officials in temples and the ones he personally saw, and he mentioned that the statues of "Impermanences" were 1) dressed in mourning robes and 2) about a Zhang and two Chi (3+ meter) in height.

Which suggests that, by the novel's time, the ghost cops had already gained a set of uniforms, one associated with funerary affairs.

(Also: I love Ksitigarbha's answer to that particular question——"Yeah we used to have a really tall ghost cop like that, people just call him 'Wuchang' because they don't know what the heck he is. Also, Impermanence isn't actually a real name, it's a concept.")

However, as far as I know, the earliest mention of a pair of ghost cops, one in white and one in black, was in Vol. 19 of Yuewei Caotang Biji. And the story is quite funny.

Basically, this Sun guy was temporarily residing in someone else's house, and the host's mother was severely ill. One day, the family servant boy carried in some dinner for him, and because Sun was busy with something else, he told the boy to put it on a nearby table in another room.

Suddenly, a white robed guy just appeared out of nowhere and entered the house, followed by a short black robed guy.

Sun hurried into the room, saw the two guys stealing his dinner, and angrily yelled at them. The white robed guy noped out of there, leaving the black robed guy behind and hiding in a corner, unable to exit the room because Sun was blocking the door.

He kinda just sat outside and kept an eye on them for a while, before the host of the family suddenly showed up, telling him that his mother had just spoken.

Basically, the ghost officials had come for her, and one of them happened to be cornered in the room by Sun, so would he please move? She didn't want to be punished for showing up late.

The host didn't know if it was true either, and was just going out there and checking. But the moment Sun went and sat somewhere else, the ghost in black scampered out of the room. Soon afterwards, wailing began to come out of the mother's room, suggesting she had been taken away.

As hilariously pathetic as these two unnamed ghost cops are, the only thing connecting them to the Heibai Wuchang of much later times is their robe colors, and the black-robed one being short.

There are no tales featuring both 1) a pair of ghost cops in black and white, and 2) the pair being referred to as "Impermanences", though.

The middle-late Qing stories that do refer to the ghost cops as such tend to only feature a single Impermanence: unnaturally tall, dressed in white robes and hats, either holding a fan or carrying strings of paper money on his shoulders, sometimes bleeding from his eyes or nose/mouth.

(Yep, you know how the White Impermanence is often seen as the older of the two sworn brothers? As far as their historical existence goes, he really is the older guy.)

It was in the 19th century 醉茶志怪 that we saw the first signs of the two converging. In the three stories with "Impermanence" in their titles, two featured the "white-robed ghost cop in tall hat" alone, one of which described him as looking like a 10+ years old kid, standing at the side of the road like a temple clay statue.

The third story, however, featured a sighting of two giant ghosts, one in white and one in blue/green, near the City God's temple. Out of the four people involved in the encounter, three died after a few days, and the only survivor was the one who had his line of sight blocked by the palaquin.

How did 1 become 2?

How did the single unique Impermanence become the Black and White Impermanences?

Well…it's a complicated question with no definitive answers. We know that in the (probably Qing dynasty) Jade Records, there are already mentions of a pair of ghosts called Huo Wuchang ("Life-is-Impermanent" or "Living Impermanence") and Si Youfen ("Death-Has-a-Part").

The former wears a black official hat and formal robes, holds brushes and papers in his hands, with blades on his shoulders and torture tools on his belts. He has big bulging eyes and is often laughing.

The latter has dirty, bloodied face, wears a white robe, holds an abacus, carries a sack of rice on his shoulder and has paper money dangling in front of his chest like a necklace. He has a sad frown on his face and is always sighing.

As you can see, there are similarities, but also notable differences from the "iconic" Black & White Impermanences. Whereas the White Impermanence is usually depicted as the cheerful one in white robes, carrying an abacus and wearing strings of paper money, here, he is the sad and grim one.

Their jobs also differ: instead of fetching souls to the Underworld, in the Jade Records, these two are responsible for pushing the dead off the bridges after they have drunken Mengpo's amnesia soup, into the scarlet river so they can reincarnate.

Personally, I view them as a transistory stage between the "Generic Impermanence Ghosts" and "The Two Unique Psychopomps We Know and Love", one strand of the folk god evolutionary process that was captured in written sources.

A Japanese paper goes into another strand in the evolution: the addition of the Black Impermanence. Namely, he might have grown out of a ghost that commonly showed up in City God worship and parades, the so-called "Wall-touching Ghost" (摸壁鬼).

The claim was based on very late Qing newspaper illustrations, where the Black Impermanence was depicted as holding up his two arms like this:

Which was a gesture commonly used by the "Wall-touching Ghost" during parades in the Jiangsu area, who also wore black robes and tall hats.

The author of the paper then dug into sources about the Wall-touching Ghost, and not only found records of the parades, but also a Qianlong era Mulian opera script, 劝善金科, that paired him together with the Impermanence Ghost as fetchers of the dead.

(The two were also given names in this opera: the Impermanence Ghost is named Ba Yang, and the Wall-touching Ghost, Wu Qi.)

Earlier mentions of the Wall-touching Ghost in Qing folklore compendiums, however, didn't depict him as a ghost cop. The story in 夜航船 just described it as a ghost thing that hid between walls and used its chill breath to suck up people's souls.

Another story in the 1878 浇愁集, even though it described the ghost more——dark-faced, holding its arms up like in the drawing, could turn into a cloud of black smoke and disappear into walls——still had it as your typical "ghost shows up, people die" ill omen.

So the paper's proposition is that, after the White Impermanence has separated out of the "Generic Ghost Cop Impermanences" and become his own thing, people in southern Jiangsu built on their existing Wall-touching Ghost and made him into the former's partner, absorbing most of his iconography in the process.

Similarly, the "tall and short" pair-up that was popular in Fujian and spread across Taiwan and SEA might also be a result of parallel local evolution, together with the name Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu.

Xie and Fan

Yes! At last, at last, we are getting to the most well-known and popular origin story, a.k.a. the Nantai Bridge Tale.

A summary: Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu were a pair of best friends/sworn brothers from Fujian, working as constables for the local magistrate. One day, while they were out on a mission, they saw a storm brewing. Xie went back to grab umbrellas while Fan waited for him under the bridge.

Unfortunately, the downpour soon began, causing the river to flood. Fan, unwilling to break his promise, continued waiting for Xie under the bridge and drowned. When Xie returned and saw his sworn brother's corpse, he hang himself out of guilt and grief too.

(…As a casual reader, I, always wondered why "waiting ON the bridge instead of under it" never crossed his mind as an option. Okay, sure, it was raining. But that's all the more reason to not stand under the darn bridge.)

Touched by their loyalty to each other, the City God/King Yama/Jade Emperor appoints them as ghostly constables, responsible for fetching the dead to the Underworld.

This story bears a lot of similarity to the fable of Wei Sheng in Zhuangzi. Basically, the guy made a promise to meet a girl under a bridge, the girl didn't show up, there was a flood, and, unwilling to leave, he drowned while still clinging to the bridge pillar.

Zhuangzi's opinion of the guy wasn't too high, because honestly, what a stupid way to die.

However, Sima Qian held him up as an exemplar of loyalty and keeping one's word, and the reading stuck. For later folktales about Wei Sheng as well as others that adopted the basic premise, like one tale in the 七世夫妻 story cycle, it also tended to get turned into a straight-up love story.

Though the Nantai Bridge Tale is the most popular version of their backstory, it's far from the only version. One version has them as Tang dynasty officials, working under the historical figure Zhang Xun, who died during the Anshi Rebellion.

While they were trying to get reinforcements, Xie was caught and hung on the city gate by the rebels, while Fan accidentally drowned.

When Zhang Xun was made a City God after the city fell and the rebels killed him, these two also became deified as his attendants.

In another version, Xie was a filial son with an aging mother, who had been wrongly imprisoned because of a friend's crime. During the Lunar New Year, Fan found him crying in the cell, and, upon learning about his sad backstory, released him secretly to visit his mother, on the condition that he returns after seven days.

However, his mother died soon after his return. Busy with her funeral, Xie did not return in time, and Fan, unable to answer to his superiors, committed suicide via drinking poison. When Xie returned and learned of the terrible news, he, too, hang himself.

And these three are far from the only known versions! Like, seriously, there are probably as many variations of the story as there are variations of the objects they held in their hands.

Though some elements stay more constant——using their deaths to explain their iconography, Xie being more commonly associated with the fan, umbrella, and abacus and Fan, chains, everything is subjected to changes and regional differences.

(For example, SEA oral legends tend to associate them with opium. Most of the time, they are constables or mercenaries employed to track down opium smugglers and other criminals, but some have them as Robin Hood-esque opium smugglers.)

Anyways, I hope this long post has offered some insight into the two iconic, yet also somewhat obscure ghost cops. I might add an "Appendix of Fun Facts and Tales" that doesn't fit into the main body of the post, but for now? That will be all.

May the readers who celebrate it have a nice Zhongyuan Festival.

Bibliography:

蔺坤:《无常鬼考源》

大谷亨：《黑无常的诞生与演变—— 以江苏南部的摸壁鬼传说为中心》

陈威伯、施静宜：《七爷八爷成神故事研究》

江義雄：《臺灣「黑白無常」與「范謝將軍」研究》

吳彥鋒：《臺灣七爺八爺傳說及其與信仰���係研究》

中国国家博物馆藏《十一面观音变相》的阐释

劉榕峻：狂放不羈、怪異獨特：談香港藝術館展出的「揚州八怪」

Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism

Fabian Graham, Voices from the Underworld: Chinese Hell Deity Worship in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia

CBETA: 《地藏王菩萨本愿经》

CBETA：《佛说地藏王菩萨发心因缘十王经》

夷坚志/支癸07，“赵彥珍妻”

《金瓶梅词话》，Chapter 74

《醋葫芦》，Chapter 12

《劝善金科》Vol.5, Part 2

The Jade Guidebook: Appendices, translated by David K. Jordan

Journey to the West Vol.1, Chapter 11, translated by Anthony C. Yu

[animefeminist]

Becoming Monstrous: Yurikuma Arashi and transmisogyny in the school system

Content Warning: Discussion of queer/transphobia (including slurs), online and workplace harassment, grooming, systemic violence

Spoilers for Yurikuma Arashi, referenced spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica

“This is the nature of systems: the moment you reject them, you are forced to realize that they’re the very ground you’re standing on.” -Ikuhara Kunihiko

Two bears are presented with a choice: will you be invisible, or will you eat humans? They look like teddy bears, and they are on trial. wo girl bears–two lesbian girls–Ginko and Lily, standing before three male judges deciding whether or not they should have the right to exist. In order to have their love approved, they declare: they will eat humans. They transform, taking on human form as they don hypersexualized bear girl outfits, and they enter the world of the school.

Yurikuma Arashi places this strange set-piece towards the middle of its first three episodes. It exemplifies the show’s style, told as it is in enigmatic parables. Ostensibly, Yurikuma is about a human girl named Kureha seeking answers about the deaths of her mother and girlfriend while getting into a love triangle involving the two bears who have infiltrated her school disguised as humans.

However, everything in Yurikuma Arashi is more symbol than literal representation, and I have often mulled over its meaning as I’ve navigated entering the teaching profession as a nonbinary Chinese person. Like the bears, I’ve often asked myself: what do I sacrifice to be allowed to exist within the school?

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[eyezdrawz]

👁️🤡INTRO POST🤡👁️

Meet the artist!

Last updated: October 21nd 2024

Hi! I'm Eyez or Ken or Margo! My pronouns are he/him🏳️‍⚧️!!

I am a minor so please take that to mind when you talk to me, like, please don't be weird if your 18+

(purple: what I like most)

I like Pepsi and mt. Dew 🥤

Insta: eyecantibal

discord: eyez_in_disguize

Art archive side blog: eyezreblogz

pfp by @/whattheheckins

DNI: Homophobes, Transphobes, p3dos, pr0shippers, racists, bigots, fascists, people who make AI "art", and other idiots

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT REPOST MY ART WITHOUT CREDIT.

I believe in peace and freedom for every country (ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE IN NEED RIGHT NOW!🍉)

✏️What I post!: Art, music rants, random thoughts, and reblogs

Link to my ocs master post: https://eyezdrawz.tumblr.com/post/763241944591761408/oc-master-post

❤️Main interest!:

Camp here and there (my fav podcast and this is what I mainly draw/write about) (finished podcast)

Malevolent (two episodes i need to listen to)

TMA (finished podcast) (not caught up with tmagp)

Old gods of Appalachia (need to relisten to)

Interview with the vampire (TV show and movie, currently ready the books)

Hannibal NBC

Midnight Mass

Joker (2019)

The Stanley parable

BG3

Dead plate

8:11

Tokyo ghoul

vampires

Cowboys

Vulture Culture/Bones

Heavy Gore/blood/body horror/Eldritch horror

Ocs (Santiago, Mikeal, Andias, and Bernadette)

And more!

🎵Music I listen to!

Will wood/will wood and the tapeworms (fav artist)

The Dear Hunter

Shayfer james

Hozier

Amigo the devil

Penelope Scott

Bear ghost

Tally Hall (and other tally hall related bands/members/projects)

Chonny Jash

And more!

All of my special interests/fixations: vampires, gore, gothic lit, bones, vulture culture, my favorite animals (deer, vampire deer (Siberian musk deer/Chinese water deer, wolves, hyenas, shrikes, maned wolves) human anatomy+medical terms and examination

Characters I relate too:

Armand from iwtv (I kin him so much it's not normal)

will graham from Hannibal

the butcher from malevolent

John doe from malevolent

Arther Fleck from joker 2019

random blinkies I like✌️: (i did not make these blinkies, all credits go to the people who made these) (chnt hourglass blinkie made by @/delicatecentipede)

Are you a writer? A poet? An artist? A singer? A creative person? Consider joining the poets discord! (14+)

https://discord.com/invite/nvq4nRkkXx

[don-dake]

unexpected 成語 (idiom) lesson on

Bluey ～ The Sign (S03?E49?) 🙀😻

The story that Calypso was reading to Bluey's class? That is the story behind the Chinese idiom,

塞翁失馬 [焉/安知非福]

usually, only the first part (塞翁失馬) is uttered in practical use

🇭🇰🇲🇴 coi³ jung¹ sat¹ maa⁵ [jin¹/on¹ zi¹ fei¹ fuk¹]

🀄 ㄙㄞˋ ㄨㄥ ㄕ ㄇㄚˇ [ㄧㄢ/ㄢ ㄓ ㄈㄟ ㄈㄨˊ]

🀄 sài wēng shī mǎ [yān/ān zhī fēi fú]

Literal meaning: The old man of the frontier lost his horse (how could he know if this is not fortuitous?)

Meaning: Similar to the sayings, “a blessing in disguise”, “every cloud has a silver lining”.

And there's actually a Wiki entry for this! Quote from Wiki:

“One of the most famous parables from the Huainanzi (淮南子; 'Master of Huainan'), chapter 18 (人間訓; Rénjiānxùn; 'In the World of Man') dating to the 2nd century B.C. The story exemplifies the view of Taoism regarding "fortune" ("good luck") and "misfortune" ("bad luck").

The story is well-known throughout the East Asian cultural sphere and is often invoked to express the idea of "silver lining" or "blessing in disguise" in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese.”

The Chinese language nerd in me was getting increasingly stoked as Calypso read out more and more of the story…I was like, wait a minute…this sounds bloody familiar…and then I had my Aha! 🙀 moment…😸

[tanuki-kimono]

Refined shibori yukata, with kanji parable “setsugekka” ("Snow, Moon, and Flower").

It references a Chinese poem written by Bai Juyi (Tang dynasty) where the beginning of a verse goes “I remember you especially when snow, the moon or flowers are beautiful”.  

During Edo period, this expression came to represent the passing of seasons (winter snow, autumn moon, spring flowers), and was a popular theme for ukiyoe prints series. Here is one, pretty litteral, by Sakai Hôitsu:

And here is another one, with famous poetesses embodying the concepts (from left to right: Sei Shônagon, Murasaki Shikibu, Ono no Komachi):

You can find more examples on Wikipedia :)

[morsmortish]

this probably doesn't work with the chinese black family headcanon (and with the magical world in general), but i can't stop thinking about walburga as the daughter of two religious fanatics, speding her afternoons reading the bible in her room as a child and, on halloween, praying to god to save the souls of all the children who stopped at her house asking for sweets...

honestly all my hcs exist in various aus from canon…is canon reg chinese? nope! but i will write extensively about how him being chinese fits into the same series of events as canon, and how he is influenced by this culture and what it means for the story? yep! but it is still an alternate universe where the house of black are not white (because let’s be real. in canon, they are. sadly.)

and this. the house of black alternatively existing as part of an extremist christian faction…that’s the SHIT! thinking something more akin to a cult, like scientology or likewise. not much space for original ideas or individualism or even existing much outside of one’s faith, until who one becomes is intrinsically linked to the values of the church…okay! i see you!

walburga is taught wrong and right more in the sense of sinful or not sinful. she recites psalms and proverbs and parables, but beneath that, she lacks a true sense of identity. perhaps it scares her when she sees her own children start to experiment with self-expression and/or existing outside of the religious values she raises them on. this freedom of deciding one’s identity is something she never had, and watching her children reject what she believes to be the ‘safety net’ of religion is so terrifying to her. for walburga, as long as her faith is strong, she is protected. she’s never know any other way. and all she wants as a mother is to protect her children, but watching them start to form their own paths, away from her, away from religion, away from purity and safety…