Page 233 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols 226

Representations of external complaints

Menstruation

yue-jing

During menstruation, a Chinese woman is not allowed to go to a temple, take part in a
pilgrimage or have sexual intercourse. By Chinese reckoning, menstruation begins at 14
years of age (corresponding to 13 by Western reckoning). The term yue-jing = ‘month-
period’ is often replaced by such metaphors as ‘little red sister has come’, ‘the red news’,
‘the monthly news’, ‘the first tide’, ‘the red general grasps the door’, ‘riding a horse’.
‘The dirty cloth’, ‘the monthly cloth’ – the cloths used in menstruation – can be used
along with the blood of a black dog, the penis of a white horse plus a lot of dirty water, to
ward off black magic. The menstrual blood of virgins is supposed to be of medicinal use
in sexual troubles.
If a cloth used in menstruation is buried under the threshold, the woman will always

remain in the house and never run away. Another way of insuring this is to burn the cloth
on the 7th day of the 7th Chinese month and sprinkle the ashes on the door frame.
Little attention is paid to sexual education. When they have their first period, girls do
not even dare to ask for help or information.

Metal

jin

Metal is one of the five elements or ‘permutations of being’. The word jin is often
used as equivalent to ‘gold’: its symbolic correlatives are the West and the colour white.