Free God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence Page A

the local saying, "means that one will plow the mountaintops; no rain, that one will have to plow the bottoms of the ponds." But there are other signals from the heavens that must be watched with equal care: a squall that doesn't last, despite its initial fury; a sudden violent cloud­burst, with heavy wind and thunder; or a severed rainbow after rain, known as the Mother of Typhoons, that presages the rage and roar of the fiercest storms that knock down homes and trees, and make travel on the waterways impossible. These are called warnings from Pengzu himself, China's longest-living patriarch.'
    In Hua, the people are told that to avoid poverty they must light huge fires in the street to greet the Yellow Emperor's arrival, and placate the grain spirits by offering them boiled suckling pig and wine. To further assure good fortune, they should eat dried fish in bulk at the moment of the winter solstice. To place themselves under the Jade Emperor's protec­tion at year's end, they burn model houses of bamboo and stay awake all night, hang strings of oranges before their doors, and carve peachwood charms for the gods of the gate. To keep cold winds away, they eat boiled noodles cooked in ritual vessels. To greet the moon in the middle of the autumn, they prepare three separate types of mooncakes, called "goosefat," "hardskin," and "soft skin" cakes, ranging in weight from an ounce or two to several pounds, some sweet, some salt, their surfaces decorated with multicolored pictures of humans and animals. Eaten as the lanterns are hoisted high to greet the moon, these cakes bring promise of early marriage and plenteous children. 8
    Animals and birds, mythical or real, are an inextricable part of these relations with the spirit worlds. Dragons are linked through ceremonies to certain days of the year, when the way they are propitiated can deter­mine the force of the sun or prevent the rain clouds from forming and releasing their bounty; at the winter solstice, for instance, "the hidden dragon represents the Celestial Breath which returns to the point of its departure." In this role, the dragon stands for the yang force of the east, the strength of sun and light. 9
    The tiger and the cock each features prominently in many ways and guises, also linked to the changing cycles of the seasons, especially the passage from winter into spring. Because of stories from antiquity, the tiger is often associated with a giant peach tree, under which he stands at the eastern corner of the world waiting to eat the spectral victims bound and passed on to him by two divine protectors of the human race. By association of ideas—and lacking real tigers—the magistrates often place peachwood images of human guardians outside their formal office entrances, and painted tigers on the lintels, from which also dangle the ropes of reed or rush in which the specters had once been bound. The specters entering the tiger's maw had approached the peach tree from the northeast, and thus the tiger came to represent the yang force vanquishing the powers of winter, cold, and yin (the north). 10
    The red color of peach can counteract evil. Strips of red paper on a house door are effective substitutes for peachwood images, just as peach twigs can serve in exorcism, and even the roughest picture of a tiger guard a house from harm, as infants might also be protected by wearing a simple "tiger hat." 11 A white tiger, however, represents different kinds of dan­ger—it is linked to the stratagems and the violence of war, the thirst for blood, and also can bring mortal danger to infants and to pregnant women. With its name linked to certain so-called baleful stars, the white tiger figures centrally in astrologers' calculations of avoiding disaster.
    Thus can a spirit considered the protector become, in altered guise, a force of death and destruction. 12
    The cock looms large in local consciousness as well. Sometimes it is sacrificed, its blood smeared over door lintels to