Happy Lunar New Year! In the Chinese calendar it is already year 4718, the Year of the Metal Ox. Gosh, where does the time go? Weirdly, one of New York City’s symbols is, I guess, technically a metal, ox so I put him up there for visual interest. In both the Chinese and Western culture, the metal ox is symbolic of wealth, prosperity, and success. Let us hope that 2021…er, I mean 4718…brings such things to all of us (particularly to you, dear reader).
Humankind’s association with cattle and oxen goes way back to 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East around 10,500 years ago (genetic analysis tools really have a way of clearing up some of paleohistory’s cobwebs!) Since those days, selective breeding has allowed humankind to tailor-make cattle of all sorts of shapes, colors, and characteristics, to such a degree that it is hard to believe they all descend directly from that 80 original herd of four score. Next week I promise a very special kine post to show you what I mean! Here is a little teaser picture so that you will come back for that post (and by “little”, I mean this is a little pre-taste of cattle-themed excitement: obviously there is nothing little about that bull who is pictured with a normal-sized adult human)
But this is Chinese New Year, and we are straying a bit from Chinese oxen, so let us go straight to an undiluted Chinese masterpiece which celebrates the strength, beauty, and personality of oxen in the Middle Kingdom. Here is “Five Oxen” 五牛图 arguably one of the most famous paintings in Chinese history.
The work was painted sometime in the middle of the 8th century AD by Han Huang, AKA Duke Zhongsu of Jin. Han Huang is now renowned as perhaps the greatest cow painter in Chinese history, but in his life he was relegated the less glamorous task of running the Chinese empire as the chancellor/prime minister for Emperor Dezong of the Tang Dynasty. The painting was lost in 1900 after European troops put down the Boxer rebellion and occupied Beijing, but it was rediscovered in Hong Kong during the 1950s and now graces the Palace museum in Beijing. Click on that painting fast, before WordPress changes something and you are unable to look at a high-def picture of the picture. It rewards close attention with its matchless bovine beauty!
Whatever his strengths and weaknesses as a statesman, Han Huang was a master of building form with calligraphic linework. In this grand scroll, he has utilized that skill to perfection to capture the overwhelming physical heft of five very different oxen. Yet the painting’s true strength does not come only from the oxen’s strength. Somehow Huang has not just captured their imposing bulk and might, he has captured the gentle curiosity and almost childlike diffidence of the great animals (except maybe for that first ox on the left, who has a very stolid cast to him).
Of course this juxtaposition is the very essence of oxen (to our human perspective anyway). They are the size of houses with the strength of small armies, and yet they are biddable and gentle…or at least they can be! In the west, bulls are known for being un-gentle! I have deliberately blurred the lines between bulls, oxen, steer cattle, kine, and cows in this post because I didn’t even want to talk about gender and number, and I certainly don’t want to talk about buffalo (the Chinese word 牛 can mean “ox” or “bovine creature” so arguably I could be parsing out the differences between water buffalo, yaks, bison, and cattle). We will talk about what all of that means later (if at all), but for the purpose of this post it means that cattle stand high enough in importance to humans (or at least to cattlemen) to demand incredibly specific and complicated terminology (I get the feeling that the Duke of Jin would understand.
In the Chinese zodiac, the steadfast ox was meant to be first sign, except it was tricked by the cunning rat. This was not just because oxen are tireless and strong, it is because they are first in importance to people and have been for a long time.
ferrebeekeeper 
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February 12, 2021 at 6:10 AM
K Hindall
No, no, no. The bronze statue in NYC is of a *bull*, not an ox. As Ben Franklin said in the play _1776_ (and maybe in real life, since so much of that was quotes), “Calling an American an Englishman is sort of like calling an ox a bull. He’s grateful for the honor, but he’d much rather have restored what’s rightfully his” (that is, his testicles).
Which is why all the aggressive animals I keep seeing in New Year’s art annoy me. Oxen are very placid—which is what humans are looking for when they castrate them. All these snorting, pawing creatures are unquestionably bulls, and my sister says that she looked it up and there’s a different character for bulls. It’s the Year of the Ox, not the Year of the Bull (or Bovine Creature in general).
February 13, 2021 at 3:14 PM
Wayne
That is a very solidly defended point of view and one certainly shared by Huang Han, who definitely painted oxen (and whose beautiful painting is supposed to be the centerpiece of this post). Also, I have never much liked that Wall Street bull statue, which, despite its fame, is not a particularly great bull statue to my taste. Why couldn’t our greedy city burghers have commissioned a good bull in the style of Antoine-Louis Barye’s piece–or even ancient Harappan or Roman bulls?
Yet, the year really is “the year of the bovine creature” (牛) or maybe “year of the cattle creature”. “Year of the Ox” is an English approximation. You may have to put up with some aggro bulls slipping into your lunar new year iconography (althoug it sounds like you would be within your rights to make all the gentle steer or lovely cow New Years art you wish).
Finally, I am not sure that that quote fragment quite does justice to Broadway Ben Franklin’s full thought. Here is the full exchange from the play:
It seems Broadway Ben was chafing at a lack of full political representation (a fraught subject to this very day) and not saying that Americans are just emasculated Englishmen.
I have been grinding my teeth trying to properly characterize all of these kine words in two languages (one of which I don’t know at all). Then I picked up my Liddell Scott lexicon, and half of the book (which is to say half of Attic Greek vocabulary) is dedicated to finite distinctions of artiodactyla and perissodactyla within sundry domestic and hunting contexts! The Inuit may have a hundred words for snow, but Aeschylus had a thousand words for hoofed beasts!
February 13, 2021 at 4:06 PM
K Hindall
I would argue that given the traits of someone born in the Year of the Ox, the one thing that they did *not* mean is a bull.
Year of the Ox people are supposed to be industrious, gentle, and eschew the limelight (my father was born in 1937, a previous Year of the Ox, so I know that one). Those characteristics hardly describe a bull, which is almost always an extreme dangerous animal.
I live in a milk-producing region, and one of my co-workers about thirty years ago had married into a family with a dairy farm. They had been *thrilled* when AI came in and they no longer had to keep a bull, a creature so mind-bogglingly sex driven that he had trouble telling humans from cattle. Yes, I do mean bulls will attack men and try to mate with women, often killing whichever is relevant at the time.
I’m willing to believe that the animal could be a cow; in fact Wikipedia says the Gurung of Nepal explicitly replace the Ox with the Cow in their cycle. But there’s just no way that the people who set up that cycle had bulls in mind.
February 13, 2021 at 8:30 PM
Wayne
I hear what you are saying and agree that bulls are not to be trifled with. Great Grandpa apparently had a much-loved Hereford with a head the size (and consistency) of a bank safe who was gentle as a puppy, but that guy was apparently a famous exception. I believe your dairy country friend’s testimony: Holstein bulls are said to be cruel devils (although some of the other smaller dairy breeds might have nicer dispositions).
Uh, anyway, in Vietnam, this is the Year of the Water Buffalo: maybe that is what we will celebrate!
February 16, 2021 at 1:17 PM
mom
Your great grandpa also had a longhorn bull that pinned your uncle and me in the pigpen. Grandma, who was afraid of all farm animals, picked up a 2X4 and chased him away. Goes to show what a mother will do for her kids.
February 19, 2021 at 10:30 AM
Wayne
I forgot about that longhorn bull (he was the dislikable anti-hero in family bull stories), but his stereotypical bull behavior certainly confirms K Hindall’s misgivings.