Page 124 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 117
Occasionally, the fan symbolised the rank of an official. Zhong-li Quan, one
of the eight Immortals, is recognisable by the fan with which he revives the dead.
Many gods have fans which they use to drive away evil. Because of phonetic similarity
(shan = fan; shan = good) the fan is a symbol of ‘goodness’. A fan is given as a parting
present in the hope that the traveller can use it to keep himself cool! Beautifully painted
fans have always been a speciality of the great Chinese artists.

Fang-zhang

According to tradition, Shi Huang-di, the first Emperor of China, is supposed to have
sent the wise man Xu Fu to the three mysterious islands in the Eastern Ocean, in order to
find out more about them.
These three islands had the following names: Fang-zhang = ‘Square Fathom’;
Peng-lai = ‘Profusion of Weeds’; Ying-zhou = ‘Ocean Continent’ (Fairyland). They were
supposed to be islands of paradise in which immortals led a happy life that never ended.
The Emperor was troubled by thoughts of approaching death, and part of Xu Fu’s
mission was to bring home the weed of immortality.
In addition to meaning ‘square’ and being correlated with earth, fang means
‘prescription’ or ‘recipe’. It also means the cell of a Buddhist monk in which visitors are
frequently received.
The precise meaning of fang – ‘a fathom square’ – would restrict its use to denoting a
rather small, modest room: in practice, however, the space so denoted was not always so
small.

Fat-belly Buddha

Mi-le fo

Non-historical Buddhas proliferate in both India and China, and all of them are equipped
with detailed iconographies: for example, Amitabha Buddha, the ‘Buddha of the Endless
Light’, who lives in the ‘Paradise of the West’, surrounded by countless Bodhisattvas.
Then there is Maitreya Buddha, ‘one yet to come’, who reigns in the Tusita Heaven; he is
of noble and ascetic appearance, and he looks with unfathomable eyes into an eternal
future in which the world has been redeemed (something which the historical Buddha
never promised). Towards the end of the first millennium AD, Maitreya Buddha, the
‘Buddha yet to come’, made his appearance as the laughting ‘Fat-belly Buddha’. Under
the Song Dynasty (960–1280) he came into his own as one of the most popular gods in
East Asia.