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The Chinese word for bat, “fu” (蝠) is the same as the Chinese word “fu” (福) for good fortune. Because the words are homonyms (indeed the characters are rather similar as well), Chinese art is absolutely filled with bats which nearly always represent best wishes for good fortune (although Zhang Guo Lao, the oldest and most eccentric of the 8 immortals, was said to have begun his existence as a primordial white bat of chaos).
At any rate, once you know what to look for, you start seeing bats everywhere in Chinese art and ornament. A particularly common motif is the wu fu, which features five bats representative of the five blessings: health, wealth, longevity, love of virtue, and a peaceful death. Various famous rebuses pair the wu fu with other geometric good luck symbols, and so we have the rebus of “Wu Fu Peng Shou” (five bats surrounding the symbol for longevity) or the Rebus of Wu Fu He He, which involves yet another complicated homonym (“he” means little round box, but “He He” was a goddess/fairy of nuptial felicity). When you see five bats surrounding a round geometric device (and now that you are looking for it, you WILL see it) you have chanced upon a rebus of Wu Fu He He.
Dear reader, I hope all of these fu symbols heap blessings upon you. May you know vigor, prosperity, old age, the love of virtue, and abundant benisons of all sorts! But I also hope that some of this fu transfers over to real bats. They are close cousins to us grasping, cunning primates, but the world we are making is bringing the chiroptera all sorts of problems! We will talk about that more in subsequent posts, but to finish this post, here is a peach fu vase of surpassing summery loveliness.
Colorful Garden Cookies!
Today (December 4th) is national cookie day! Cookies are tiny sweet cakes which are eaten as dessert or a general treat…or with tea if you are English or Irish. The English and Irish, coincidentally, know them as biscuits (although it is unclear if it is ‘National Biscuit Day” over there). To celebrate, I thought about making my favorite cookies (oatmeal? snickerdoodles? chocolate crinkles?), but it is late in the day and anyway, at the end, I would just have tons of hot delicious cookies distracting me from flounder art. Plus, due to the sad limitations of the internet I cannot share baked goods with you—even though I like my readers and would love to bake a treat for you. So instead I have decided to celebrate cookie day by featuring pictures of cookies found (stolen?) from around the internet. I have a little gallery dedicated to several different Ferrebeekeeper topics.
Catfish Cookies!
Mollusc Cookies!
Serpent Cookies
Gothic Cookies!
Space Cookies
Crown Cookies: there were SO many of these. Why do people love kings and queens and princesses so much?
Mammal Cookies (barely) from Nanny’s Sugar Cookies LLC
Underworld Goddess Cookies
Turkey Cookies
Nightmarish Mascot Cookies
One of the delightful/disturbing things about this exercise is seeing how talented and creative everyone is. Look at the beauty of these cookies! Based on the esoteric subject matter (and the places I found the images) most of these are hand crafted, yet they look finer and more original than anything from a baker’s window. It is great to know how gifted everyone is too, but it is sad on several levels. If we can bring the earnestness, attention to detail, raw creativity, and hard work people put into baked goods into politics, we could get out of the political decline and societal stagnation we are in. Um, we are going to have to actually do that.
Barf
But we can worry about that later in the week (when I will shake off my torpor and write a meaningful essay on our political deadlock (and our moral problems in general). In the meantime, enjoy the cookies! After seeing what people have done with this medium I am thinking about making some cutters of my own so I can bring up my own cookie game. Also I still have that big project I am working on! I can’t wait to show you what it is in the New Year!
Oracular Chinese cookies
- Chinese blue and white kraak dish, Wanli (1573-1619), flying birds and flowering peonies in a rocky landscape with border roundels of peach and misc flowers.
Peonies are a favorite flower of Chinese gardeners. The flower has been cultivated there since before the dawn of history and it bears the title “huawang”, king of flowers, (as well as the equally lofty name “fùguìhuā” flower of riches and honor). Thriving in Northern China and the Yangtze Valley, the peony is a symbol of love, affection, good fortune, beauty, and riches. The flower’s appeal is extremely broad. In China, the peony is the consummate representative of the season of spring (summer is represented by a lotus; fall by a chrysanthemum; and winter by the wild plum).
Chinese blue and white kraak, Wanli (1573-1619), a peony emerging from rockwork
Because the peony represents such universally esteemed ideals, it is a symbol which can be found everywhere in Chinese art. As May ends, this year’s peony season is swiftly passing away, but to remember the beautiful king of flowers, here are 3 Ming dynasty platter-bowls which feature peonies which have survived unblemished for centuries. The first two are Wanli Kraaks–pieces which were made in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century–possibly for export. The final piece is older and rarer: it is a Yongle reign platter made at the turn of the 14th & 15th centuries for a domestic patron. Look at how beautiful and elegant the brushstrokes are in comparison with the more hastily produced later work.
Charger with two Peony Blossoms Early 15th century (Yongle Reign)
Although everyone is familiar with the dragon and the phoenix, there are many other fantastical creatures in the Chinese mythological bestiary. The Quilin or Ch’i-lin (AKA the “Chinese unicorn”) was believed to be indigenous to the realms of heaven. Seldom seen on earth because of its goodness, purity and nobility, the appearance of a quilin before mortal eyes heralded prodigious good fortune. Quilins reputedly only visit earth to presage the birth of the greatest sages and rulers or to signal the advent of a prodigious leap forward.
Like many other mythical animals, the quilin is a wild hybridization of other creatures: it traditionally has a wolf’s head with a single horn (although sometimes it is portrayed with antlers), a multicolored deer’s body covered with fish scales, the hooves of a horse, and the tail of an ox. Its voice sounds like lovely bells. The quilin is most notable for its gentleness and kindness. It refuses to harm any living thing and it does not even bend the grass when it walks. Nevertheless, the quilin could be ferocious in its defense of the righteous or innocent and it is sometimes shown covered in magical flames. Genghis Khan is said to have witnessed a quilin just as he was about to conquer India. Although the creature bowed politely to the great conqueror, its message was clear and Genghis Khan cancelled his plans for subjugating the subcontinent.
It’s a bit unclear how auspicious Genghis Khan was for the world (although he certainly had a magnificent run of good fortune after seeing the quilin). Some other supposed quilin sightings make more sense. A quilin is said to have appeared to the yellow emperor, a legendary wizard-monarch who unified China under one throne in 2697 (that we have an exact date for a fictional person is a fun eccentricity of Chinese history). The quilin emerged from the water of the yellow river bearing a pictogram of China which the yellow emperor used to fashion Chinese writing.
Buddhists call it the dragon horse and revere it for the belief that it carries Buddha’s book of law on its back. Confucianists believe a quilin appeared to the sage’s mother just before he was born and spoke a line of holy prophecy to her. Under the command of the eunuch Zheng He, the treasure fleet of the Yongle Emperor visited the east coast of Africa and was presented with a giraffe. The animal fit the description of a quilin fairly closely and was brought before the Yongle Emperor as such. He dismissed the possibility by wryly saying he was no sage–however he treasured the giraffe and kept the creature in his bestiary.
The Giraffe as painted by artists of the Ming Court
I’m afraid there haven’t been many quilin sightings reported recently. Some religiously-minded Chinese devout believe that this is because the world has become entirely debased (although even for fictional creatures, quilins have always been rare). Perhaps a quilin is ready to appear again in some unlikely place to some wise soul and the world will lurch forward into a new golden era. At any rate, here is a good picture of the creature. Hopefully just looking at the likeness of the quilin will bring you the greatest of good fortune!
The Quilin
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