IN the Cernuschi Museum in Paris, a bronze vessel from the eleventh century BC, towards the end of the Shang Dynasty, depicts a great tigress holding, within her open jaws, an infant.
Easily interpreted as the tigress devouring the child it tells, instead, of a tigress that encounters a forsaken child, and carrying the infant within her jaws raises the child as her own.
The sculpture inspired the Chinese artist Chen Jiang Hong to illustrate and render one of the most memorable and moving renderings for children of recent times – The Tiger Prince.
This contemporary fable recounts the story of a lost prince who is cared for and raised by a tigress. Having been eventually found by his parents, the King and Queen, the boy prince, Wen, when forced to eventually leave the tigress, offers her these words of solace, “You are my two mothers, the one from the forest and the one from the palace. Now I have to return to the Palace to learn what princes know. But I will be back often, because I don't want to forget what tigers know.”
Much in the Chinese zodiac – for all its raucous stories and instructive fables – has to do with reconciling the world of man and woman with the world of nature.
According to legend, the Chinese zodiac was created by the mythical Jade Emperor, the incarnation of the First God. To bring the heavenly and earthly realms together, the Jade Emperor sought animal guardians for the earthly realm, each to be commemorated in the zodiac calendar in the sequence they reached him.
This brought about the fabled great race between the animals, revealing the strengths and guile of each animal. It was the Cat and Rat, which arrived at the Heavenly Gates first, using trickery to get on the back of the diligent Bull, and wading across rapid waters.
When already at the Heavenly Gates, the Cat tricked the Rat to arrive first but earned the wrath of the Jade Emperor for its deceit. The Cat was sent into exile and removed from the almanac and was to later gain, within Chinese folklore and myth, the reputation of one not to be trusted.
With that the first animal in the Chinese zodiac proved to be the Rat, followed by the Ox and the grand Tiger, which for all its flair and courage, came in only third due to challenging waters.
As parts of China turned towards Buddhism, it is said that the Buddha, before leaving earth, summoned all the animals of the world before him, but it was the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac who came to him first.
The complete Chinese zodiac, believed to represent the many cycles of the natural order and arranged according to the cycles of the moon, was eventually organised, as myth states, by the first Emperor Huangdi, and inscribed upon the back of a tortoise shell.
Within the almanac, the tiger is said to possess, beyond courage and bravery, also flair. And as the world moves tentatively towards some kind of normality and a place among reunion banquets and the complimentary fireworks, the world turns, this time to the Water Tiger, to ask, in the often repeated Cantonese phrase, “As if the Tiger got itself a pair of wings” for renewal, change and relentlessness. – The Vibes, February 1, 2022
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