Page 378 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

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a hostile army is preparing to storm the city. The attackers decide, however, that the town
must be very heavily armed indeed if its leaders can sit there eating so unconcernedly,
and they abandon their plan. In point of fact, the town was completely undefended.
For the last fifteen hundred years or so, each town has had its own tutelary deity or
‘town-god’ (cheng huang shen). He was also in some measure the patron saint – often a
deceased official of the town or a worthy mandarin, deified at popular request via the
competent official who would memorialise the Emperor in this respect. It was up to the
Emperor to decide whether this or that town deserved a tutelary deity, and to make the
relevant appointment: equally, the Emperor alone could promote or demote ‘town-gods’
already occupying such posts. In pictures, ‘town-gods’ are always shown wearing official
robes. Often the god is shown discharging another of his functions – judging recently
deceased citizens of the town he oversees.
TreeTree

shu

Ancient Chinese cosmology included the fu-sang, the ‘hollow mulberry tree’, and its
counterpart the kong-tong, the ‘hollow Paulownia tree’. Each of these represented a
hollow tree and a mountain at one and the same time: each served as a hiding place for
the sun and as a dwelling place for rulers.
Artists of the Han period often portray a hero tethering his horse to a great tree, which
may possibly represent the fu-sang tree of the ancient legends. The fu-sang tree, so it was
said, stood at the place where the sun rose. In it were many birds representing suns. The
story goes that the hero Hou Yi (also known as Shen Yi, i.e. the god Yi) shot down all of
these suns except one, as the heat of the ten suns was so great that mankind was in danger
of being burnt up. Its description suggests that the fu-sang tree was something like a
mulberry. Fu-sang was also the name of a country whose inhabitants kept deer

instead of oxen, in order to have does’ milk.
For notes on the trees of China and their symbolic meanings, see the following:
Bamboo, Boxwood, Chestnut, Cinnamon Tree, Cypress, Maple, Olive, Persimmon, Pine,
Plum, Willow, Wood Oil Tree (Paulownia), Wu-tong.
Triangle Triangle

san-jue

The triangle is hardly used at all as a symbol in China; where it occurs, it is a female
symbol ( snake).