Page 121 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 114
Eye

yan

The Chinese are visually oriented people, and accordingly a lot of attention is paid to the
eye. A beautiful woman is said to have eyes like almonds or like meteors. One’s mistress
is described as yan zhong ren – ‘the being in my eyes’.
Red eyes count as a bad sign: the god of the brothel has red eyes, and white eyebrows
into the bargain. ‘One-eye’ is an expression for the penis.
There is an ‘eye’ in the middle of the old Chinese copper coins, that is to say, a hole so
that they could be looped together in units of thousands. Many pictures show coins
together with a bat: the Chinese words for ‘bat’ (fu) and ‘good luck’ (fu) are
homonyms, and the same goes for ‘in front of’ (qian) and ‘money’ (qian). Thus such a
picture means ‘Good luck is before your eyes’ (fu zai yan-qian).

Eyebrow

mei

Eyebrows play an important part in Chinese ideas of physical attractiveness ( beauty).
As early as two thousand years ago, people were shaving them off and painting them in.
There is a well-known tale of a man who was so much in love with his wife that he
painted her eyebrows for her instead of letting her do this woman’s work for herself.

Well-formed eyebrows are said to resemble a moth; when they are thick and slightly
curved they are said to resemble a butterfly. One of the Tang Emperors had a picture
painted showing ten different kinds of eyebrows, to each of which he gave a special
name. Poets often speak of ‘eyebrows like far-distant hills’ or of ‘sad (= fine) eyebrows’.
The god who looks after prostitutes is known as the ‘god with the white eyebrows’
(bai mei shen). In appearance he resembles the god of war: he is mounted on a horse and
carries a sword. On the occasion of her first assignment with a client, the girl was
supposed to make sacrifice to him; according to a later tradition, the client was expected
to do the same when he first visited a girl.
Eyelashes are also pointers to a person’s character. A woman with very long and
curved eyebrows is supposed to be temperamental.