All 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac are considered equally auspicious, but one might say that some are more equally auspicious than others. An unstated preference can be generalized as: Four legs good; no legs bad.
Last year, during the supremely auspicious Year of the Dragon, the birth rate in Taiwan jumped by about 10 percent over the average annual birth rate. Presumably, this year will see fewer babies as families worked hard to squeeze in births last year and since this is the far less remarkable Year of the Snake.
The snake, the sixth sign of the zodiac, may be "equally auspicious," but in traditional Chinese culture the snake is grouped with the "Five Poisonous Creatures" (
One of the most widely known folk tales and popular Chinese operas, The White Snake (
In Buddhist philosophy, snakes, pigs and roosters represent humankind's three cardinal faults that prevent attainment of one's Buddha-nature -- hatred, greed and delusion, respectively.
Go to a Buddhist temple in Taiwan and you will see four Deva gods guarding the entrance. One has a snake wrapped around his arm to devour evil enemies and other undesirable visitors. Of the three other gods, one bears a sword, while the other two try to look menacing with a stringed musical instrument and an umbrella.
The snake in Chinese language is also used to evoke generally negative or evil ideas. For example, to call someone hypocritical in Chinese, one says they have "the mouth of Buddha and the heart of a serpent" (佛口蛇心). Extremely greedy people are like "a snake swallowing an elephant" (蛇吞象), and when wise people mix with the unwise, it is described as "dragons and snakes mingling" (龍蛇混雜).
While the Chinese language has little good to say about snakes, the creation myth of Taiwan's Paiwan (
The mythical progenitors of today's Han Chinese, Fu-xi (
The snake's consignment as a symbol of evil and negative aspects of life was more likely a consequence of humankind's irrational fear, associating snakes with the potentially lethal bite of the poisonous varieties of the reptile.
There are some 10 species of poisonous terrestrial snake in Taiwan, though not all can kill an adult human. By far the most fearsome is the 100 Pace Snake (
Taipei urbanites' closest encounters with a snake may be a trip to the famous (or infamous) Snake Alley (
And finally, in Taiwan, some believe that dreams of a snake portend a loss of wealth, while others believe a dream of a white snake heralds the birth of a son and a dream of a black snake heralds a daughter.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
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The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
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