Page 225 - China's Renaissance in Bronze, The Robert H.CIague Collection of Later Chinese Bronzes 1100-1900

-ITH THE BODY OF A FISH and the head of a dragon, the carp
changes into a dragon as it leaps vertically from the water. Although
Wthe head and upper body face upward, the tail and caudal portion
lie flat, forming the base. Its mouth open, revealing teeth, fangs, and a
pointed tongue, the removeable head is that of a dragon, with snout, horns,
mane, whiskers, bearded lower jaw, and frontally placed bulging eyes;
with its scales and striated ventral and caudal fins, the body is that of a
fish, except for the row of dragon spikes that has replaced the dorsal fin.
Inset with polished glass or stone, the jet-black eyes imbue the creature with
life. Incense would have been burnt in the hollow body, the smoke emerg-
ing from the mouth, conveying the impression of a fire-breathing dragon.
The lightly scalloped interface of head and body suggests the gills. A rust-
brown coating conceals the brassy hue of the bronze.
Apart from symbolizing abundance, freedom from restraint, marital
harmony, and fecundity [see 56], the carp has long represented literary
success, an emblem of the young scholar or examination candidate. The
association of carp with scholars and literary success derives from popular
tradition, which holds that the carp in the Yellow River swim upstream
every spring, during the third lunar month, and that those that succeed in
leaping the falls at Longmen are transformed into dragons. 1 Confucians
seized the leaping carp as the perfect symbol for success in the exams; as
carp are transformed into dragons, so are young scholars transformed into
learned men and, ultimately, into high officials. The leaping carp, especially
the dragon-headed carp, is thus a rebus for liyu tiao longmen, 'The carp
has leaped through the dragon gate,' a saying popular in Ming and Qing
times as an allusion to literary success [compare 48].
Fish-shaped vessels were popular as gifts during the Qing. Those
with traditional carp heads [56] could be used for newlyweds or scholars,
but those with dragon heads were intended for scholars (or for families
with sons aspiring to officialdom). Rare in porcelain, fish-shaped vessels
with dragon heads frequently appear in bronze and jade. 2
An innovation of the Qianlong era, the combination of dragon head
and fish body signals this censer's eighteenth-century date. Earlier fish
vases depict the fish with its natural head, while earlier references to liter-
ary success typically show the carp already fully transformed into a dragon,
the dragon sometimes presented in combination with a gateway to under-
score the rebus, longmen [see 48].

T H E R O B E R T II. C L A G U E C O L L E C T I O N 2 2 1