Page 268 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 261
ritualistic penitence, sexual practices and the mass burning of incense were popular
means of inducing access to the subconscious. Other secret societies discarded ritual and
devoted themselves to more practical affairs of everyday life – e.g. the Xian-tian (‘Earlier
than Heaven’) sect and the Wu Wei (‘Do without Ado’) sect.
Spiritualistic practices are still found today – e.g. in a temple, a square board is strewn
with sand or ashes, over which two men hold a rod: during the seance, the rod ‘moves by
itself’ and makes characters or signs on the board. A specialist is then brought in to
decipher and interpret these ‘messages from the world beyond’.
See also Amulet, Soul.
Odour

qi-wei

It is true that the classical literature distinguishes five odours. These are: goatish
(associated with the East and with wood); the smell of burning (associated with the South
and with fire); fragrant (associated with the earth and the middle); rancid (associated with
the West and with metal) and putrid (associated with the North and with water). But, as
far as ordinary people are concerned, only two come into question: nice smells and nasty
ones. ‘Fragrance’ (xiang or fang) is a stock encomium for everything concerning a
woman – her bedroom, her clothes, her hair, skin, body and genitalia. A brothel is
described as ‘the hell of fragrance and powder’. The tongue of the beloved is a ‘soft
fragrance’. Virgins have a ‘scent of purity’. ‘Curious scents’ can have a stimulating
effect, e.g. a woman’s sweat. But the smell of a woman’s bound feet (common in old
China) was also a ‘curious scent’.
An expression frequently used to describe the feelings of young men is ‘sympathy
with the scent and caring about the jade’. Many men dream of ‘sweet perfume’.
A very curious expression is ‘listening to the scent’. ‘Adding scent’ is a custom observed

on the eve of a wedding: relations of the bride come and throw money into a chest in
which there is incense. ‘Scent’ in this expression is equivalent to ‘incense’, which is
still burned today in temples as part of the act of worship. There are ‘incense clocks’
which consist of a coin fastened to an incense stick. When the stick burns down, the coin
falls into a bowl with a tinkling sound. Short periods of time can be measured in this way,
e.g. the time it takes a story-teller to relate something, etc.
‘Incense-head’ is an expression denoting a shaman; ‘scented flesh’ is a taboo
expression for dog-meat.
Stench (chou) is not often mentioned. A particularly awful stench is ‘fox-smell’
which is typical of foreigners (i.e. Europeans) and which, according to a modern novel, is
simply unendurable. The smell of armpits also comes into this category.