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.
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