Fat, filthy or sincere, honest?

By Raymond Zhou ( China Daily ) Updated: 2007-03-26 09:32:33

This is the Year of the Pig. We Chinese are supposed to turn the animal into a lovey-dovey pet. But, no! In spite of all the colorful piggy banks that are sold in souvenir stores, we still have a love-hate relationship with the pig.

When used figuratively, "pig" is predominantly pejorative. In English, someone who is called "a pig" is greedy or gross. The Chinese connotation is slightly different. A pig evokes three images: gluttonous, lazy and dirty. The "lazy" part is a contrast with the Western interpretation. If you're slothful, you cannot be too avaricious, right?

Well, obviously, it is a nicety that does not bother linguists. The bottom line is, don't call anyone a pig, in either English or Chinese or banter, because it'll be an insult.

But wait! A friend of mine calls himself "flypig". An entertainment reporter from South China uses "milk pig" as her handle. If you browse the Internet, you'll come across many who gladly take on the pot-bellied swine as their identification. And these people belong to the cool generation.

Yet, the same netizens rose up in angry protests when a scholar released a study entitled "Chinese are the descendents of the pig". Huang Shouyu uncovered a slew of totem images and concluded that primeval Chinese worshipped the porcus omnivorous. (I'm trying to be pompous here.)

The reason? It was seen as intelligent, aggressive and virile. That was before they were domesticated and bred for human consumption, of course.

The virility part actually seeped into the Chinese zodiac. Just witness the boomlet of piglets this year and imagine all the overcrowded classrooms a decade from now, and you'll understand why people love to pop into this world when all the pigs are lined up.

Contrary to the scholar's interpretation, children born in the Year of the Boar are believed to be easy going, sincere, tolerant, honest and naive. Does that sound implausible? Well, think of it, these traits could be a positive spin of lazy, fat and filthy.

But I digress. Professor Huang antagonized the online public because they grew up with "We're descendents of the dragon" honed into the psyche. Huang contends that it dates back only 30 years, when two pop jingles from Hong Kong and Taiwan popularized the myth of the dragon.

Honestly, I did not read through his thesis, which is long and filled with archaic terms and citations. I just feel that the dragon is so cool and, even though it has slayers chasing on its tail, it will never be someone's bacon, which, I guess, is a bigger fear than being accused of bad smell. On top of it, dragons fly regularly, and probably don't require a passport and a visa, while pigs fly, well, when pigs fly.

I wonder if the pig will ever rise in stature to rival the dragon. Perhaps when some of the pig-named young are crowned with celebrity halo, they'll call themselves "Li Little Pig" or "Becoming Pig" to offset the legacy of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

In the meanwhile, the pig will be a polarizing figure, somewhat like Hillary Clinton, who by chance was born in a Year of the Pig.

(China Daily 03/26/2007 page8)