Page 221 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 214
Man

nan

Many Chinese paintings show a man or men: and we can only understand the symbolical
content when we know who is being represented. A young man dancing, waving a string
of coins, with a toad in front of him, is Liu Hai. If the man carries a sword, looks
very fierce, and is surrounded by demons and wild beasts, he must be Zhong-kui.
If he is standing on a fiery wheel and despatching his enemies, he is Nuo-zha.
Two old men who must be monks, to judge from their bald pates, are Han-shan and
Shi-de ( He-he, broom).
A lengthy message of good wishes is conveyed by a picture of an old man carrying a
child on his back: the child has a musical stone, the old man has a staff with two
oranges and a fan made from banana leaves hanging from it: nearby there is a
second child, and a bat flies round the whole group. We may spell the message out in
telegraphese: good wishes – fate – good – lots of luck. It is a picture that is particularly
suitable as a birthday gift for an older man.
Man is naturally identified with yang, the male element, just as woman is
identified with yin. ‘Male’ and ‘female’ form a contrastive pair which takes many
forms: straight and angular contrasted with round and curved, heaven with earth,
out with in, lofty with low-lying. As depicted in Chinese literature, man reduces to two
main types: the military man, rough, courageous and coarse, and the civil service official,
who is mild and inoffensive. The latter does not make things happen, things happen to
him. He lives modestly, is attentive to his parents and is generally passive. Hence he is
readily seduced or led astray, with dire results for himself.
In the popular romance Ping yao zhuan (‘The Defeat of the Demons’), a remarkable
document of the 17th century (perhaps earlier: the date is not quite certain), we are told
that the sexual drive is of equal intensity in men and women. So, if a man is permitted to

take more than one woman, why should a woman be taken to task if she does the same
thing? In keeping with his yang nature, man does ‘outward’ things: he works ‘outside’
the house, and the woman depends on him to provide for both of them. It is for this
reason that she is supposed to be obedient to laws drawn up by men: for this reason she is
to stick to one man and never be unfaithful. Gifted women, however, who surpass men in
many ways, do not adhere to such rules, and they cannot be made to do so.
If you want to be rude about a man, you can call him a nan-nü = man-woman. And a
well-known proverb puts a specifically male point of view: ‘Ten men are easier to control
than one woman: and ten women are easier to control than one child.’
A particularly derogatory expression common in novels for a woman of easy virtue is
‘Dog-man-woman’.
‘Men’s Houses’ or ‘Youth Houses’ in which unmarried men lived in group fashion
were found among the minority peoples in South Chinese regions. The same sort of thing
was known among the Cantonese Chinese, on the Ryukyu Islands and in Korea, and, no
doubt, in ancient China, up to about two thousand years ago. Young men were at liberty