Slick, Slithery and Slippery

[myl: This is an inaugural post from Chu-Ren Huang, a new LLOG contributor.]

The 29^th of January will be the first day of the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese zodiac. Of all the twelve animals representing the zodiac, the choice of the snake may seem to be dubious to our modern sensibility. Dragons and tigers are powerful and elegant, horses and bulls are strong and practical, monkeys are human-like and smart, and all others are familiar in a home or farm setting. But why was a snake chosen to be the sixth animal in the twelve-year cycle?

The perceived slick, slithery and slippery nature of the snake poses a linguistic challenge every twelve years. One of the culturally significant practices of Chinese language arts is to create new year jingles by including or inserting the name of the zodiac animal within the traditional form of a Chinese idiom. Popular motifs include soaring dragons, prancing tigers and galloping horses. One could also invoke the loyalty of dogs, perseverance of cow/water buffalos, swiftness of rabbits, and diligence to rise at the first crow of a rooster. Mice, sheep, pigs are all associated with the affluence of a household in different ways. But what are the redeeming properties of the snake?

One of the most pragmatic devices of language arts for such celebratory occasions is to append a desirable adjective. This the same device that named all film and other arts awards in greater China, e.g. Golden Flower, Golden Horse or Golden Rooster. The Oscar is translated as 'the Golden Statue Award 金像奖 jin1xiang4jiang3' which gives 'the little golden guy 小金人xiao3jin1ren2' as awards. The Chinese digital media is already inundated with expressions such as  ‘Golden snakes herald happiness 金蛇报喜jin1she2bao4xi3’  or ‘Fortune snakes welcome the spring 福蛇迎春fu2she2ying2cun1’. This is an easy way to incorporate the snake into a four-character idiom but does not bring special meaning for this new year. And even though tempted by the clever and fitting pun, I very much doubt people would appreciate ‘福蛇吐信fu2she2tu3xin4’ which is a pun that has a ‘fortune snake’ literally stick out its tongue or metaphorically ‘share news, (信 xin4 stands for message, faith, or tongue, especially for snakes and lizards).

Another productive device of Chinese language arts is the substitution of (near) homophones. This approach has been especially popular in modern times, probably due to the familiarity and common uses of various romanization systems nowadays. Instead of 舍我其谁 she3wo3qi2shei2 ‘(To lead, to take on the challenge) there is no one but me’, one could use 蛇我其谁 she2wo3qi2shei2 with the near homophone of the second tone 蛇she2 instead of the original third tone 舍 she3. A very colloquial rendition clips the final ‘n’ from 什shen2 in 什么都有shen2medou1you3 ‘(we) have anything you can think of’ and use蛇么都有she2medou1you3. These expressions are cute but highly derivative and do not invoke the meaning of the snake as a zodiac animal.

There are several conventional Chinese idioms containing the word snake. The best known one is杯弓蛇影 bei1gong1sheying3‘ (mistaking) the reflection of a bow as a snake in the cup; false alarm’, which refers to the shape of a snake. An appropriate one of this year is 虚与委蛇xu1yu3wei1yi2, attributed to the philosopher ZhuangZi more than 2,000 years ago. Here the meaning of 委蛇wei1yi2 ‘bending-snake’ is to wind and bend like a snake, i.e. to be flexible. Currently, this expression is used to describe zigzag or s-bend roads. In the original story from ZhuangZi, the protagonist outwitted a know-it-all guru who came to challenge him by flowing with the changing tactics of the challenge without committing to an a priori position himself. The conventionalized meaning of the idiom is to hold no preconceptions and dynamically adapt to all changes. In modern Mandarin, however, 虚与委蛇 xu1yu3wei1yi2 is most often used to refer to insincere, perfunctory, or deceiving acts or elusive positions. This new metaphoric use invoking the slithering and slippery nature of the snake was first attested less than a hundred year ago. I suspect that this slick, slithering and slippery image of the snake was influenced by western metaphors involving snake, and not as part of the imagery of the snake as a zodiac animal. In this new year of changes and challenges, the original interpretation of ZhuangZi’s story provides a useful guidepost: by acknowledging the flexible bendy shape of the snake, we are better able to thrive in complex times through dynamic adaptation.