Great snakes!

Some people have an irrational fear of the snake, yet the legends involving this zodiac animal includes a bittersweet tale of vows and hearts broken and love transcending disaster, Raymond Zhou tells us.

Let's face it: The snake has an image problem. In preparation for the Year of the Snake, a mammoth decoration in the form of the elongate, legless, carnivorous reptile was erected at a highway toll plaza in Sichuan province. Somehow, they gave the snake the countenance of a chicken. Onlookers joked that whoever sculpted it must have been born in the Year of the Rooster, and others chimed in that they would no longer be afraid of the snake now that it had taken the shape of a friendlier animal.

On these occasions, Chinese people have traditionally resorted to euphemisms to represent the snake in an auspicious light. The dragon, a symbol of power and majesty, is often used to stand in for its earthbound peer, which is certainly one of the reasons for envisioning the mythical animal; hence the term "the little dragon".

Still, efforts to distinguish the two have been unceasing, as is evident in such catchphrases as "an assortment of dragons and snakes", meaning people of different qualities and status sharing one space, and "dragons withdrawing and snakes expanding", meaning good guys lying low and bad elements strutting their stuff. Obviously, it is futile to pass off snakes as dragons. In China, snakes are predominantly associated with venom - even though only 65 species out of some 600 in the country are poisonous. Worldwide, there are 725 species of venomous snakes, of which about 250 can kill a human with one bite.

Legend has it that the venom from the bite of a particular viper can cause a human victim to drop dead before he or she could walk more than seven steps. The Chinese name for it is "Seven-Pacer", or Russell's Viper in English.