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Chinese artist Li Kuchan's work expressing personal emotion from the story "Joy on the water bank" recorded in "Zhuang Zi-the Fall Water."
A painting of motionless carp by 19th century French impressionist artist Edward Marne.
Folk papercut "Eight diagram fish" implying yin-yang view and perpetual life.
Porcelain buckled bowl from Lu Zhor,Sichuan.
| On Chinese New Year of the },ear of rat, a woman farmer named Li Aiping sent me a paper-cut of "rat coming out of a Buckled bowl", named "Rat biting open the sky." According to the folklore, rat and fish are proliferation saints. The buckled bowl symbolizes the undivided universe. On the year of rat, the rat came out to bite open the sky and started life on earth. Polyspermic plants like gourd, pumpkin, grape, are also symbols of propagation. In art works, their function of producing seeds is what it matters. Therefore, in spite that the seeds can not be seen from the outside, they are still being drawn. Once I mentioned to the women that the pumpkin seeds were not visible, they said, "But pumpkin has seeds." Then I'd realized that it was not the gourd, the pumpkin or the grape that they wanted to draw, it was the seeds inside. The seeds were metaphorical of the children that were conceived by the uterus (In the form of a gourd, a pumpkin and grape) of mother's body. Original Chinese philosophy defines the basic characteristics of Chinese folk art. Likewise, "Rat eating pumpkin," "Rat eating grape" are of the same implication.
Fish with lotus is another cultural symbol indicating the unity of earth and the sky, male and female. "Fish playing around lotus;" "Fish biting lotus" are favorite paper-cuts for Chinese New Year and wedding ceremonies. It is known to all in China that fish stands for male and the polyspermic lotus for female, but few knew the difference between "Fish playing around lotus" and "Fish biting lotus." One Chinese New Year when I was in Yijun Wuli town of northern Shaanxi, some young girls were there making paper-cut for window decorations. I asked a girl what she was making. "Fish playing around lotus," she replied. I asked another girl, the answer was "Fish biting lotus." When asked what "fish playing lotus" meant, they smiled and said "They are dating." "How about 'fish biting lotus'?" Nobody responded and everybody flushed. A stand-by woman holding a baby in her arm spoke for them, "Well, they slept together." The group burst into laughter. "Fish playing around lotus" is fish playing above the water, meaning "dating;" but "Fish biting lotus" has the fish under the water to bite the lotus stem, which is "getting married." Different combinations of two images actually have a strict boundary line in implications. One girl even added a baby to her feature paper-cut "Fish biting lotus," which was named "lotus bearing seed." However, this addition couldn't be in "Fish playing around lotus." "It would be having kids without getting married," explained the woman holding a baby. Obviously, at each stage from dating, getting married to having kids, there is a corresponding art arrangement to convey it.
In paper-cut "Rooster holding a fish in the mouth;" and "Fish with a rooster head," the rooster is a metaphor for the sky and of male nature; while the fish is for earth and female. That is their way of displaying the unity of heaven and earth, yin and yang, male and female in the language of art.
Paper-cut "Loving tiger", with 3 or 4 adorable baby tigers inside mother tiger's abdomen; or "Monkey eating cigarettes" showing cute baby monkeys inside mother monkey's abdomen; and a pair of birds with fledglings; etc., are also art forms expressing the theme of propagation through images of legendary animals. |
