Page 102 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

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fire. The master is saved – but the dog dies of exhaustion. Over his grave they put the
inscription ‘The grave of a faithful dog’. Another, related story tells how a dog guards its
master’s belongings until it dies.

Woman with a dog on a lead (from an old almanac)

Among the Yao (another of the South Chinese minority peoples) the dog is venerated
as the forefather of the race. At the root of this idea lies a legend according to which a
Chinese Emperor, after struggling in vain for a long time against his enemies, finally
promised that whoever brought him the head of the rebel leader would have his
daughter’s hand in marriage – whereupon a dog appears bearing the head of the slain
leader, and, however unwillingly, the Emperor has to honour his word. The dog takes the
girl into the mountains and they marry. The Yao are the issue of this union. They still
wear a ‘dog-cap’ (which I saw for myself in Zhejiang in 1934) and of course they do not
eat dog-flesh.

Stories about dog-men, who have men’s bodies and dogs’ heads, are widespread in
North Asia. Some Chinese reports even locate them on an island to the east of Korea.
It is striking that pet-names for dogs are very rarely mentioned in Chinese texts.
At most we hear of ‘the yellow dog’ and so on. Nowadays, foreign names are usually
given to dogs: they are never given names which could be the names of people. A ‘black
dog’ is a man who runs after every woman he sees.