The talismans in both the live-action and animated shows originate from Daoist talismans, which in turn developed from early shamanistic traditions. Like what Lan Wangji tells Jiang Cheng in the show, real life Daoist talismans are usually made for beneficial purposes, one of which being to ward off evil spirits. Other purposes of such talismans include everything from curing illnesses to controlling floods to communicating with the gods. In order to call forth gods to accomplish these goals, writing/drawing on the talismans usually include “incantations” that start with “勅令”, or “command”, on the very top. The word can be traced back to 敕令, which refers to orders from an emperor, but since 敕 is traditionally reserved for the emperor, Daoists use 勅 on their talismans. The meaning is also slightly changed, as 敕 has 攵 on the right, implying the order is written; meanwhile 勅 has 力/force on the right, implying the order is executed by “force”.
The body of the talisman sometimes include complex combinations of Chinese characters (合体字/複文) that are more like visual symbols and do not have their own pronunciations. On a talisman these “combination characters” are usually arranged in a specific pattern. These combination characters aren’t exclusive to Daoism, however. Below is a well-known combination character created from the word 招財進寶 (lit: “gaining wealth and attracting riches”), commonly seen pasted on doors and windows around Chinese New Year for luck.
Other elements of a talisman are mostly made up of symbols such as the yinyang symbol, eight trigrams, and special strokes that also hold symbolic meaning.
A fun detail from the animated show: in the scene where Jiang Cheng shows the inverted evil-warding talisman to Lan Wangji, we can see that WWX’s addition in blood near the top turns the 人 part into 夷, as in 夷陵老祖/”Yiling Founder”, giving the viewer a solid hint as to who changed the talismans.
Sword (Jian)/剑
Jian sword refers specifically to pointed double-edged one-handed straight swords. The sword is important to religious Daoism, but its origin as a culturally-significant symbol lies in history.
The sword was an actual weapon used on the battlefield before Han dynasty (before 202 BC), and it was that time, long long ago, that the sword was associated with certain human qualities, such as an unyielding sense of justice. From there, the jian sword eventually became an ornamental item symbolizing high social status. Evidences of this can be found in the Book of Rites (《禮記》), a book detailing etiquettes and rituals for nobles of Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC). For example, a chapter mentioned “when looking upon a gentleman’s attire, sword, and carriage horse, do not gossip about their value” (“觀君子之衣服，服劍，乘馬，弗賈”). One such decorative jian sword artifact even survived to this day:
Sword of Goujian, King of Yue (越王勾践剑), part of the collection of Hubei Provincial Museum. Note: the engraved “bird-worm seal script” (鳥蟲篆; basically a highly decorative font) text says “Goujian, King of Yue, made this sword for his personal use” (戉王鸠浅，自乍用鐱).
By the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD), Daoism had established itself as a folk religion. Many of the customs and etiquettes passed down from pre-Qin dynasty times were mystified and given religious importance in the then newly-established Daoist belief system, including the aforementioned etiquettes involving the jian sword. People came to believe the jian sword as holding magical properties, a weapon gifted by heaven itself, allowing its wielder (usually a Daoist priest) to fight and triumph over demonic spirits. As the jian sword became more and more of a Daoist ceremonial item than an actual weapon, it also slowly changed to this familiar form today:
(Modern ceremonial Daoist jian swords. Fun fact: it is widely believed that jian swords made entirely of peach wood have better demon-banishing abilities than regular swords, since peach trees were said to have demon-warding effects.)
So, a sword that was worn to show respect, used to showcase social status AND have demon-warding powers? Does that sound familiar?
It was no accident that the day WWX refused to take his sword with him (since he gave his core to Jiang Cheng so Jiang Cheng could continue to use swords) was also the day the other sects/clans started to alienate him. The sword symbolized status, and WWX was only the son of a servant, a “lone genius” (一枝独秀/”a lone blooming branch”, in the words of Jiang Cheng) among all the young nobles, so it was fitting that WWX abandoned the “righteous” sword path to walk a new and unique path in order to reach his full potential.
“Fly whisk”/“duster”/fu chen/拂尘
Remember the funny-looking duster-like objects that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen held in the live action series? Those are called fu chen, or “拂尘” in Chinese, and hold symbolic meaning in Daoism. To explore that meaning, let’s first explain the name “fu chen”. Fu chen literally means “brush dust”, so the Chinese meaning is really more like “duster” than the common English translation of “fly whisk”. But then what sort of “dust” is it really “brushing”?
In both Daoism and Chinese Buddhism, there is a concept of “dust” (尘), which symbolizes the normal secular human society, with all of its material objects and worldly wants and worries. Thus, the symbolic meaning of fu chen/“duster” is to clear these worries and wants–in other words, worldly attachments–from one’s mind, allowing one to exit the secular world. For this reason, in China, the process of abandoning one’s normal life in society for the life of a Daoist priest or Buddhist monk is called “出家” (lit. “exiting home”) or “出世” (lit. “exiting world”; world here meaning society).
Since both Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen are Daoist priests (they were both referred to as “道长”), and both wandered through the world banishing evil rather than settling down somewhere and integrating into society, it was a nice choice to have them each hold a fu chen.
“Stygian Tiger Seal” or “Yin Tiger Seal”/阴虎符
This one is a non-Daoist reference, but it’s still rooted in Chinese history, so here we go.
The fact that the Stygian Tiger seal is called a “tiger seal”/虎符 and has two halves that unleash powerful resentment energy when fitted together (this mechanism is present in both book and live-action but is absent in the animated show, where the two halves appear to be conjoined), points to the inspiration being the tiger amulet. In imperial China, tiger amulets/虎符 are metal tiger figurines that split into halves lengthwise, and serve the important purpose of approving military deployment. The imperial court would hold the right half, while the left half would be issued to military officials.
When army deployment is needed, the official would bring the left half of the figurine to the imperial court, and if it combines with the right half into a whole figurine, then the military deployment would be officially approved. Historically, tiger amulets are a security measure designed to give the imperial court control over the military. This is reflected in the Yin Tiger Seal’s function as well, since canonically its power can only be unleashed when the two halves are fitted together.
Finally, some joke talismans I found on the web:
Translation: “No need to work overtime”; “hold the talisman and chant ‘PIKA PIKA’”, “will confuse your boss so you can get off work early”.
Translation: “passes exam without studying”, “bullshitting it”, “no need to study”. (I think I’ll need one of these lol…………………………..)
According to this list, these are the top 10 surnames in China as of 2020*:
李 Lǐ
王 Wáng
张 Zhāng
刘 Liú
陈 Chén
杨 Yáng
赵 Zhào
黄 Huáng
周 Zhōu
吴 Wú
I’ve seen articles like this one discussing the regional distribution of surnames. I wanted to take a look myself and compare the top surnames in different provinces/municipalities. For instance, do any locations have a top 10 list that is the same as the overall country top 10? Which surname is ranked #1 in the most locations? Let’s explore and have some fun along the way.
*The top surnames for 西藏 Tibet are not included. I believe this is because the population is vast majority Tibetan.
1) Find how many surnames in a location’s top 10 are also in the national top 10.
Most in common
Arrows: grey = same as national rank, green = higher than national rank, red = lower than national rank Circles: orange = in national top 10 but missing from top 10 of individual location, blue = outside national top 10
2) Find the average national rank for each location’s top 10 list.
OK, this section is a little confusing. Basically, I was thinking that just counting overlapping surnames this isn’t necessarily the best metric. When it comes to surnames outside the national top 10, just counting like I did above can’t distinguish a rank of 100 from a rank of 11! So I decided to take averages.
For each location, I found the national rank of the its top 10 surnames and averaged them. This should give me an idea of which location’s top 10 surnames collectively rank the highest in the whole country. If you add up 1-10 and divide by 10, you get an average of 5.5, so that would be the minimum possible average.
Lowest average
Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank Blue circling = outside of national top 10 Annotated numbers = national rank
湖北 Hubei - 6.2 average Outside national top 10: 胡 Hú & 徐 Xú
安徽 Anhui - 6.3 average Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 孙 Sūn
江苏 Jiangsu - 6.5 average Outside national top 10: 徐 Xú & 朱 Zhū
Highest average
海南 Hainan - 30.5 average Outside national top 10: 符 Fú, 林 Lín & 郑 Zhèng
广西 Guangxi - 28.2 average Outside national top 10: 梁 Liáng, 韦 Wéi, 陆 Lù & 卢 Lú
上海 Shanghai - 16.2 average Outside national top 10: 朱 Zhū, 徐 Xú, 沈 Shěn & 陆 Lù
3) Add the difference in rank of surnames for each location to create a composite score.
Then I started to think about order within the top 10. After all, a province for which 李 Lǐ ranks #10 should be treated differently from one where 李 Lǐ is #1. So I wanted to capture the difference between a surname’s national rank and its rank for individual locations.
For example, in 广东 Guangdong, 陈 Chén ranks #1, but it’s #5 in the whole country. The difference is 5 - 1 = 4. I did this for the other 9 surnames in 广东 Guangdong’s top 10 as well and added the numbers to get a composite score. Then I repeated this for the other locations.
I used absolute values—otherwise a positive difference and negative difference would offset each other! But I used + and - signs in the images below to show more information. You could also divided by 10 to get the average difference for the top 10 surnames each location.
Lowest score
Highlighting: red = lower than national rank, green = higher than national rank, no highlighting = same as national rank Blue circling = outside of national top 10 Annotated numbers = difference b/t national rank and local rank, with (+) indicating a higher rank locally and (-) indicating a lower rank locally
安徽 Anhui - 14 score
四川 Sichuan - 15 score
宁夏 Ningxia - 20 score
Highest score
海南 Hainan - 264 score
广西 Guangxi - 253 score
山西 Shanxi - 113 score
上海 Shanghai - 113 score
4) For each location, determine how many surnames have no difference in rank.
As an extension of the above, for each location, I counted the number of top 10 surnames that had no difference in rank compared to the national rank. Let’s look closer at locations whose top 10 lists had the fewest changes:
I’ll also list the locations for which no surnames had the same rank as in the top 10:
广东 Guangdong
福建 Fujian
江西 Jiangxi
江苏 Jiangsu
贵州 Guizhou
Summary: Which location’s top 10 is closest to the national top 10?
We just saw several different ways of looking at this. Someone who is better at math than I am would probably devise a way to combine the different metrics into a single score. I’m just going to recap which locations we saw appear the most.
Overall most similar: 四川 Sichuan & 安徽 Anhui
Overall least similar: 广西 Guangxi, 上海 Shanghai & 海南 Hainan
5) Find which surnames appear on the most and least location top 10 lists.
This wasn’t something I was initially curious about, but after my analyses above, I grew curious. I’m just looking at the national top 10 surnames here. There are 30 locations total, so 30 is the highest possible number.
So 李 Lǐ and 张 Zhāng are the only two that appear in the top 10 for all 30 locations!
I also thought it would be interesting to see which locations are missing for the surnames that were close to 30/30:
This questions grew pretty naturally off of the question above. I spent far too long making this map to go along with the numbers!
The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations! It’s so interesting to see how 王 Wáng is dominant in the north, 陈 Chén rules the southern coast, etc.
王 Wáng - 1st in 15 locations
李 Lǐ - 1st in 6 locations
陈 Chén - 1st in 4 locations
张 Zhāng - 1st in 3 locations
刘 Liú - 1st in 1 location
黄 Huáng - 1st in 1 location
The winner is…王 Wáng with 15 locations!
7) Mainland China vs. Taiwan vs. Hong Kong
I thought this would be an interesting comparison. I wanted to include Macau as well, but I had difficulty finding a list. Here is the Hong Kong data source.
Arrows: green = higher than Mainland rank, red = lower than Mainland rank Circles: orange = in Mainland top 10 but missing from the HK and/or TW top 10, blue = outside Mainland top 10
I was actually surprised how similar the top 10s are for Taiwan and Hong Kong!
I also wanted to compare Taiwan and Hong Kong to Fujian and Guangdong, respectively. These are the two provinces in Mainland China that they are closest to.
Now, I’m no history expert, but I know that a lot of Taiwanese have roots in Fujian, so it makes a lot of sense that their top 10 lists look so similar. I don’t know much about the history of migration to Hong Kong, but as such a major economic center, I’m guessing people from all over China came to Hong Kong.
Thank you!
If you actually read this whole post, I’m impressed. Thank you!
I initially began working on this post in September 2021. Needless to say, this post ended up being a lot longer and taking up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. I asked my dad to read over an earlier draft of this post for me, and he literally asked me, “why are you doing this?” I didn’t really have a concrete answer. I just thought it would be interesting to explore surnames a bit. And so here we are :)
When you face a moment where it would help to dish out a compliment, say to a male partner or a friend or a friend’s son, China Simplified wants you to be armed and ready!
The current trendy expressions – 小鲜肉 xiǎo xiān ròu a hot guy (lit. little fresh meat), 男神 nán shén male god, and 高富帅 gāofù shuài tall, rich and handsome – are great among friends to show you know the latest pop culture sayings. In other settings, however, you may want to reach for a more sophisticated compliment, one able to communicate a degree of respect and intellectual substance.
The Kitchen God is one of the most important of domestic gods that protect the hearth and family.
On the 23rd/24th of the 12th month of the lunar calendar, a week before Chinese New Year, the Kitchen God returns to heaven to report on the activities of every household to the Jade Emperor. People will make offerings to the Kitchen God on this day so that he’ll put in a good word for them. As a result, the Jade Emperor will not punish or may even reward the family for the coming year.
Chinese etiquette: decline twice; they’re just being polite unless they offer three times.
IIRC, modern Japan* has something very similar to this as their de facto etiquette in such a situation, so I had wondered if that was the case :D I’m delighted to find out my first instinct was correct! It makes the scene so much funnier when you know the underlying etiquette.
The talismans in both the live-action and animated shows originate from Daoist talismans, which in turn developed from early shamanistic traditions. Like what Lan Wangji tells Jiang Cheng in the show, real life Daoist talismans are usually made for beneficial purposes, one of which being to ward off evil spirits. Other purposes of such talismans include everything from curing illnesses to controlling floods to communicating with the gods. In order to call forth gods to accomplish these goals, writing/drawing on the talismans usually include “incantations” that start with “勅令”, or “command”, on the very top. The word can be traced back to 敕令, which refers to orders from an emperor, but since 敕 is traditionally reserved for the emperor, Daoists use 勅 on their talismans. The meaning is also slightly changed, as 敕 has 攵 on the right, implying the order is written; meanwhile 勅 has 力/force on the right, implying the order is executed by “force”.
The body of the talisman sometimes include complex combinations of Chinese characters (合体字/複文) that are more like visual symbols and do not have their own pronunciations. On a talisman these “combination characters” are usually arranged in a specific pattern. These combination characters aren’t exclusive to Daoism, however. Below is a well-known combination character created from the word 招財進寶 (lit: “gaining wealth and attracting riches”), commonly seen pasted on doors and windows around Chinese New Year for luck.
Other elements of a talisman are mostly made up of symbols such as the yinyang symbol, eight trigrams, and special strokes that also hold symbolic meaning.
A fun detail from the animated show: in the scene where Jiang Cheng shows the inverted evil-warding talisman to Lan Wangji, we can see that WWX’s addition in blood near the top turns the 人 part into 夷, as in 夷陵老祖/”Yiling Founder”, giving the viewer a solid hint as to who changed the talismans.
Sword (Jian)/剑
Jian sword refers specifically to pointed double-edged one-handed straight swords. The sword is important to religious Daoism, but its origin as a culturally-significant symbol lies in history.
The sword was an actual weapon used on the battlefield before Han dynasty (before 202 BC), and it was that time, long long ago, that the sword was associated with certain human qualities, such as an unyielding sense of justice. From there, the jian sword eventually became an ornamental item symbolizing high social status. Evidences of this can be found in the Book of Rites (《禮記》), a book detailing etiquettes and rituals for nobles of Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC). For example, a chapter mentioned “when looking upon a gentleman’s attire, sword, and carriage horse, do not gossip about their value” (“觀君子之衣服，服劍，乘馬，弗賈”). One such decorative jian sword artifact even survived to this day:
Sword of Goujian, King of Yue (越王勾践剑), part of the collection of Hubei Provincial Museum. Note: the engraved “bird-worm seal script” (鳥蟲篆; basically a highly decorative font) text says “Goujian, King of Yue, made this sword for his personal use” (戉王鸠浅，自乍用鐱).
By the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD), Daoism had established itself as a folk religion. Many of the customs and etiquettes passed down from pre-Qin dynasty times were mystified and given religious importance in the then newly-established Daoist belief system, including the aforementioned etiquettes involving the jian sword. People came to believe the jian sword as holding magical properties, a weapon gifted by heaven itself, allowing its wielder (usually a Daoist priest) to fight and triumph over demonic spirits. As the jian sword became more and more of a Daoist ceremonial item than an actual weapon, it also slowly changed to this familiar form today:
(Modern ceremonial Daoist jian swords. Fun fact: it is widely believed that jian swords made entirely of peach wood have better demon-banishing abilities than regular swords, since peach trees were said to have demon-warding effects.)
So, a sword that was worn to show respect, used to showcase social status AND have demon-warding powers? Does that sound familiar?
It was no accident that the day WWX refused to take his sword with him (since he gave his core to Jiang Cheng so Jiang Cheng could continue to use swords) was also the day the other sects/clans started to alienate him. The sword symbolized status, and WWX was only the son of a servant, a “lone genius” (一枝独秀/”a lone blooming branch”, in the words of Jiang Cheng) among all the young nobles, so it was fitting that WWX abandoned the “righteous” sword path to walk a new and unique path in order to reach his full potential.
“Fly whisk”/“duster”/fu chen/拂尘
Remember the funny-looking duster-like objects that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen held in the live action series? Those are called fu chen, or “拂尘” in Chinese, and hold symbolic meaning in Daoism. To explore that meaning, let’s first explain the name “fu chen”. Fu chen literally means “brush dust”, so the Chinese meaning is really more like “duster” than the common English translation of “fly whisk”. But then what sort of “dust” is it really “brushing”?
The concept of “dust” (尘) in both Daoism and Chinese Buddhism refers to the normal secular human society, with all of its material objects and worldly wants and worries. Thus, the symbolic meaning of fu chen/“duster” is to clear these worries and wants–in other words, worldly attachments–from one’s mind, allowing one to exit the secular world. For this reason, in China, the process of abandoning one’s normal life in society for the life of a Daoist priest or Buddhist monk is called “出家” (lit. “exiting home”) or “出世” (lit. “exiting world”; world here meaning society).
Since both Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen are Daoist priests (they were both referred to as “道长”), and both wandered through the world banishing evil rather than settling down somewhere and integrating into society, it was a nice choice to have them each hold a fu chen.
“Stygian Tiger Seal” or “Yin Tiger Seal”/阴虎符
This one is a non-Daoist reference, but it’s still rooted in Chinese history, so here we go.
The fact that the Stygian Tiger seal is called a “tiger seal”/虎符 and has two halves that unleash powerful resentment energy when fitted together (this mechanism is present in both book and live-action but is absent in the animated show, where the two halves appear to be conjoined), points to the inspiration being the tiger amulet. In imperial China, tiger amulets/虎符 are metal tiger figurines that split into halves lengthwise, and serve the important purpose of approving military deployment. The imperial court would hold the right half, while the left half would be issued to military officials.
When army deployment is needed, the official would bring the left half of the figurine to the imperial court, and if it combines with the right half into a whole figurine, then the military deployment would be officially approved. Historically, tiger amulets are a security measure designed to give the imperial court control over the military.
Finally, some joke talismans I found on the web:
Translation: “No need to work overtime”; “hold the talisman and chant ‘PIKA PIKA’”, “will confuse your boss so you can get off work early”.
Translation: “passes exam without studying”, “bullshitting it”, “no need to study”. (I think I’ll need one of these lol…………………………..)
Though The Untamed is a Xianxia/仙侠 drama (kind of like fantasy genre), there are some elements in it that had clear roots in Chinese culture, especially religious/philosophical Daoism. So here are some Daoist elements within the world of The Untamed/MDZS:
“Cultivation” (Dao)/道
In Chinese, the “cultivation method” is the “Dao”/“道”, which some of you may recognize as that character that sometimes stands for Daoism. Within Daoism however, that character has a deeper meaning than just a name; in fact it is one of the most important concepts of both philosophical and religious Daoism (it also has a few different meanings, but the world of The Untamed mostly focuses on one of them; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a very comprehensive article entry on Daoism that explains the concept of Dao in detail, for anyone who’s interested in more scholarly explanations). It actually translates best as “way” or “path” (note: when not referring to a specific “way”, it absolutely CANNOT be translated as “the way” or “the path”, and I will get to why that’s important), and basically means a “way” of doing something. For example, to make a salad you might rip the lettuce leaves or cut them with a knife. Both of these methods would be “ways”/道 of making a salad. And as you can see in this example, there are many different ways of arriving at a result or accomplishing a goal. Since Dao encompasses all of the different ways of doing all the different things, it cannot be translated as “the way”, since “the” would imply that “there is only one way”, or “only one right way”, of doing things.
(image credit: My Great Lakes)
This concept that there is more than one way to accomplish something is very important to the story of The Untamed/MDZS, especially in terms of Wei Wuxian. But we have to clarify the “goal” in The Untamed/MDZS first: what was it that these people were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”? Looking at the overall story, it appears that they were all generally trying to do good and uphold justice by warding off or neutralizing supernatural threats. Now that we’ve established the goal, let’s return to WWX. In the story, WWX was forced to give up the regular “cultivation”/ the “sword path”/剑道, instead founding the “demonic cultivation”/”dark path”/魔道 in order to survive the extreme environment of the Burial Mounds and acquire enough power to get revenge on the Wens. Since the Wens killed a lot of people, WWX would also be upholding justice by punishing them for their evil deeds. As the lyrics of the opening song of MDZS animated series puts it: “though his (WWX’s) ‘path’ was different, there was justice within his heart” (道不同义在心中). Conversely, this is also why the sects/clans were wrong to label different “cultivations”/“ways” as good or evil, as both WWX’s “demonic cultivation” and the regular “sword path” could be used as powerful forces for good and evil. Of course, the irony was that while the sects hailed their “sword path” as “the one right path”, they were using it to control each other, instead of using it to do good.
(The two “paths”/daos. How different are they?)
“Cultivation”/修道
Well now that we’ve cleared up what “cultivation”/道 or Dao actually is in the context of the show and what the characters were trying to accomplish with their different “ways”, this “cultivation” or 修道 becomes easier to understand. It means the development (修) of one’s skill in regard to the “path” (道) one has chosen. For example, most characters chose to develop their skills in the “sword path”. In actual religious Daoism, however, since the ultimate end purpose is to become an immortal/仙, 修道 would mean doing something to work towards that immortal status.
“Cultivator”/仙
In Daoism, the character “仙” can be translated as “immortal”, “sage”, or “celestial being”, and refers to the end goal of religious Daoists: to “metamorphose” into an immortal (羽化登仙) (also connotes transitioning into eternal afterlife through death). The characters “羽化” literally mean “to become feathery”, because at least in Western Han dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) figures and tomb murals, such immortals often appeared as humans with feathers or winged humans, and are capable of flight.
Over the next few hundred years, the appearance of immortals gradually morphed into humans that fly by floating, standing on platforms of clouds, or riding birds (often cranes)/mythical creatures.
In the drama and the animated series, 仙 is often used as a descriptor in different words (ex: 仙门, 仙家, 仙侣, 仙缘…etc), rather than a standalone noun. However, it is still a reference to this general idea of training/cultivating oneself to become something greater, and provides a strong connection to Daoism.
“Cultivators”/修士
In Daoism, this term is used less than 道士, but it still means “cultivators of Dao” (修道之人), or simply, “Daoists”. In The Untamed/MDZS, of course, it means practitioners of a “cultivation”/“path”.
“Golden core”/金丹
This one has roots in real life sects of religious Daoism. The translation “golden core” itself is quite literal. “Golden” from the descriptor 金, and “core” for 丹, presumably because it looks like a sort of core. In reality, 丹 is quite hard to translate. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy translates 丹 as “alchemy”, so I will use “alchemy” for 丹 from here on out. In religious Daoism, there are two types of this alchemy: external and internal, and both are supposed to help one towards immortality. People who practiced “external alchemy”/外丹 basically made “immortality elixirs” (in reality it wasn’t a drink like “elixir” implies, but a ball-shaped chewable) in the hopes that it would give immortality to whoever ate it. This is very much like alchemy in Europe, except instead of trying to turn things into gold, people were making things to eat for immortality. Some fun facts: these elixirs frequently contained heavy metals like mercury and lead, and ironically would shorten people’s lives instead of helping them live longer; also legend has it that an explosive attempt to make elixirs actually led to the invention of gunpowder.
(these appears to be actual products of external alchemy found in an Eastern Jin dynasty tomb, well-preserved due to its high mercury content)
This external alchemy obviously does not apply to “golden core” in The Untamed/MDZS, so let’s look at internal alchemy. “Internal alchemy”/內丹 is much more abstract than external alchemy, but in simple terms it is the practice of using meditation and similar strategies to return oneself to a state of emptiness (kind of like “one with nature”). This is probably what the show’s “golden core” was based on. Also another name for “internal alchemy”/內丹 is “golden alchemy”/金丹, literally the same characters as “golden core”/金丹 in the show.
There is one major difference though. While real practitioners of internal alchemy believe that everyone already possess a “golden alchemy” (“golden core”), in the show everyone has to “cultivate” themselves in order to have one in the first place.
(all credits on the images go to their respective creators; if this post infringes on any copyrights, please message me, and I will take it off this post)
So, most people probably know that the Chinese zodiac consists of 12 animals, and that they change yearly, commonly referred to as “year of the (animal)”. 2020 (or traditionally called the Gengzi/庚子 year, according to the Sexagenary Cycle/”Heavenly Trunks and Earthly Branches”/天干地支) is the Year of the Rat. Personally, I was born on a Year of the Rat, and I know a bunch of people who were also born on a Year of the Rat, which means that 2020 is our zodiac year/本命年!
But hold the celebrations……
Because traditionally speaking, when your zodiac year comes around, it’s actually considered to be a very bad thing for you.
Why is that?
This concept is called “犯太岁” in folk belief, which basically means “offending the reigning deity of the year”, and it originated from Daoism, where it’s called “冲克岁君” (same meaning). In religious Daoism, there is a group of 60 different deities called Taisui (太岁; all 60 are deified historical figures) who take turns reigning over the years (1 deity per year). If this next year is your zodiac year, then you have offended the reigning Taisui of that year.
You might be asking yourself, how did I offend the reigning Taisui?
Turns out it has more to do with the Sexagenary Cycle (天干地支/“Heavenly Trunks and Earthly Branches”). The Sexagenary Cycle is an ancient system for reckoning time that goes in cycles of 60 years each, and is applied to the Lunar Calendar (meaning the “years” referred to here are years as dictated by the Lunar Calendar). The 60 years are further divided into groups of 12 each, with each of the 12 being an “Earthly Branch” (地支), and each are paired up with an animal, forming the Chinese zodiac we know today. While there is a Taisui reigning over a given year, the zodiac animal of the year would assist the deity. Some people might know the pressure of working under a powerful boss who has a lot of credentials, and this is presumed to be how it is for the zodiac animal of the year. So for example, people who were born in Year of the Rat might be punished (this “punishment” usually manifest as extremely bad luck, for example, getting into a serious accident, losing a lot of money, etc) by the reigning Taisui along with the Rat, should anything go wrong.
Thankfully, tradition says that there are some things we can do to avoid an impending year of misfortune. Traditionally, people would burn offerings and pray to the reigning deity of the year to show their piety and appease the reigning Taisui. These rituals are called “安太岁” (or “摄太岁” in Hong Kong), which literally means “calming Taisui”, and are still practiced in parts of China today. However, in modern times, the more common method is to wear red-colored clothing items (usually belts or undergarments) when the person’s zodiac year comes around (at least from the eve to the 1st of the new year), in an attempt to gain back the “lost” luck (red is traditionally seen as a “lucky” color symbolizing all good things).
But regardless of whether you live by these traditions or not……
When people search for Mid-Autumn-Festival-related images, wabbits rabbits tend to pop up a lot, like this:
Or this:
But why?
“Rabbit” on the Moon:
It’s speculated that the legends about rabbits on the moon may have originated from some imaginative ancient moon-gazers, because the visible basalt plains (lunar maria) on the moon’s surface seemed to meld….and form a "shadow” of a rabbit standing over some sort of container:
But since people thousands of years ago didn’t understand the universe like we do today, they resorted to stories to explain this weird shadow on the moon, and thus the legend of Chang‘e (嫦娥) was born.
Legend of Chang’e
There were many existing versions of the story through the ages, but all revolved around Chang’e consuming the elixir of immortality, resulting in her being separated from her husband Yi (羿), the legendary archer. Some say it was because Chang’e tried to protect Yi’s elixir from a thief, some say it’s because Chang’e was a minor goddess and life on earth was too boring for her, and some say it was because Yi cheated on her with the wife of a river god. Regardless, she consumed the elixir of immortality that the gods gave to Yi. However, the gods were not pleased by this, so as punishment, they turned her into a rabbit (some say she was turned into a toad), sent her onto the moon alone, and ordered her to make immortality elixirs for eternity. But since Chang’e and Yi did love each other, they missed each other dearly, so every mid-autumn Yi would gaze at the moon to look at the rabbit, still grinding away with the mortar and pestle.
…and that’s how the Mid-Autumn Festival became associated with rabbits.
[A white fortune cookie paper with black text on the front and an icon of a bee. It reads: You have great business sense and will surprisingly succeed.]
