Chapter 29 Animals with the eighth division of the scales

October 29, 2008 at 22:42 As food, fish is a symbol of deliciousness, so Feng Yan emphasized that "you can eat without fish" when protesting to the lord.As a symbol, fish is a symbol of sexual pleasure, so the carp spirit shows a seductive look in front of the poor scholar Zhang Zhen.For hundreds of years, painters, craftsmen, shopkeepers or blacksmiths have cut a fish figure in half—often made of wood, steel, jade, clay, and sometimes even peach pits or the peritoneum of ungulates .One of the two pieces of fish is painted black and the other white.Sometimes, there will be corresponding other colors for better decoration.Opposite colors are used to represent binary oppositions in all things: yin and yang, female and male, air and fluid, truth and lies—truth is often feminine.

Putting these two pieces of fish together signifies that everything stays where it should be, and the pleasure of sex helps the bearer keep the family strong.Separate the two fish-shaped pieces and it can be used as a spell.Bind these two pieces of fish back to back and you have the most vicious spell of all.It will trigger a death event. Several court scandals from the 13th to the 16th centuries are believed to be related to these fish-shaped spells.Since then, the dissection and disposal of fish has become an important quasi-religious activity, which can only be performed by specially trained psychics.In some areas, some people regard flipping fish as the biggest taboo.

Jin State writer Gan Bao recorded the tragic origin of this taboo in his "Sou Shen Ji".The Yue Kingdom in South China was established by a man named "Wu Yu Wang".Counting from him, the thirteenth king of Yue was named Fuyu.It is said that King Fuyu loved to eat fish sticks all his life. The meat of live fish was cut into fine pieces, and then seasoned oil was poured into it.The key to making this food is that the fish used for cutting must be alive.The boiling hot oil mixed with fresh fish blood will produce a special taste with a strong pungent taste.It should be pointed out that this cooking method is too cruel.Most fish jump violently during the cutting process, which often escapes the grasp of the cook.These half-cut fish jumped into the air, their white bellies reflecting the blue-white sky, and disappeared before landing on the ground.

Therefore, local fishermen often catch fish with half of their torso cut off and swimming sideways in lakes and harbors.They called these fish "Yue Wang Belly".According to historical records, King Fuyu of Yue ruled for more than "four generations" for about 120 years.During this period, from the rivers of Wu to the bays in the east, this kind of "Yue Wang Belly" was everywhere.It is difficult to swim quickly when they are on their side, so they are always in pairs. Shen Ying, the author of "Linhai Foreign Objects", once mentioned that after Yue State was annexed by Wu State, this "Yue Wang Belly" began to migrate southward along the coastline.Residents of Fujian have also begun to frequently catch these weird fish.They don't know the origin of this kind of fish, but they just see them in pairs, shaped like cloth shoes, so they call it "shoe drawer".

Liu Xun, a traveler in the Tang Dynasty, got this story from nowhere and recorded it, but due to a copying error, this fish became "maidixi" in his pen, which means "slave's shoes".He goes on to write that the fish's mouth was lower down its body, indicating that it was an oppressed slave girl.The person who told himself this story said that in a village in the south of Luzhou Prefecture, a wealthy local businessman bought this slave girl from the population market.He had made her his second wife because he thought his first wife was infertile.But before this idea was put into practice, Yuan Pei's wife brutally beat the slave girl to death and threw her body into the river.Later, the female slave was enlightened by the gods and turned into a whale and swallowed the entire city of Luzhou.However, snakes don't have feet and don't need to wear shoes, so her shoes are slightly aggrieved and turned into maidservant fish.One shoe walks very slowly, but two shoes can move fast when put together, so the two maidservants swim together at a dizzying speed.If you are lucky enough to catch a pair, you can summon the whale that the female slave turned into.

Some writers have also noted that some of these fish rarely travel in pairs, preferring to travel alone.So they made up a story, saying that those swimming alone were the incarnations of King Fuyu of Yue.The greedy king scoured the rivers of the world for the escaped food.Because they are too violent, no one wants to approach them, so these fish can only live alone forever.