Page 114 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 107
In popular parlance, the word ‘eel’ often means ‘penis’. This is also found in Japanese.
‘Yellow Eel’ is an expression denoting a homosexual.

Egg

dan

In China, as in Europe, the egg is a symbol of fertility. During wedding festivities in
Zhejiang Province, girls used to roll eggs down the bride’s breast, so that they fell into
her lap. Painted eggs used to be used in the ceremony of washing the bride; they are now
given to wedding guests ( marriage). After giving birth, a mother is given scrambled
eggs; and eggs are given to invalids, in token of wishes for a speedy recovery. On its first
birthday, a baby gets a soft-boiled egg. Eggs painted red are exchanged at New Year:
this is called ‘sending happiness’ (for the year to come). Only zealous Buddhists
disapprove of eggs, believing that those who like to eat them will go to the hell of the
‘empty city’ after death.
Among the minority peoples of South China, the egg is much in use as a means of
foretelling the future. A beautifully painted egg is boiled and then opened – predictions
are made according to the shape taken by the yolk and the white.
Again it is in South China that most of the myths are found in which the egg plays a
big part. The world is supposed to have been an egg, out of which all creation came.
After the Great Flood, only a brother and sister were left alive. In due course, they come
to the conclusion that incest is the only way open to them if humanity is to be saved.
The woman thereupon bears an egg, from which numberless children issue forth.
Founder-heroes are born from eggs which are sometimes incubated in a nine-storey tower
(cosmic tower). A South Korean myth tells of someone finding an egg in which a baby is
lying: the child grows up to be the leader of all the world’s peoples.

Adherents of the hun-tian school of astronomy (e.g. Ge Hong, 254–334) believed that
the cosmos was egg-shaped: the earth was inside the shell, completely covered by it, and
resting like a yolk on the fluid white. It was incubated by heaven.