Just like the English word ‘bat’ can mean ‘a kind of animal’ in one context and ‘a club for playing tennis’ in another, so can pictures of animals and flowers in a pictorial design called ‘pun rebus’ in Chinese art. …
This pun rebus picture consists of four essential pictorial elements: bird, deer, bee, and monkey. The word ‘que 雀’ for ‘small bird’ in Chinese puns on the word ‘jue 爵’ for ‘high official rank’ or ‘peerage’. The word ‘lu 鹿’ for …
Continue reading “May you be created a peer and earn a handsome official income”
Yang Shen (杨慎, 1488–1559), alias Sheng’an (升庵), is a literatus and poet in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). He recorded in Volume Ninety-Four of Sheng’an Additional Works a folklore anecdote: ‘In the northern dialect, there is no difference in sound between …
Continue reading “May the whole universe prosper in eternal spring”