Tiger earns its stripes as folk hero and role model

Totemic veneration

In some ethnic groups in Southwest China, including the Yi, Naxi and Tujia peoples, the tiger has always been the most sacred animal and local people venerate it as a totem.

The Tujia believe that their earliest tribal lord was reincarnated as a white tiger, while the Yi consider themselves the descendants of tigers and cremation allows people to be reborn as the animal.

According to the Yi epic, which was passed down by word-of-mouth, when heaven and earth were first separated, everything between them was created from a tiger's carcass－its left eye became the sun, its right eye the moon, its whiskers the sunlight and its teeth the stars.

A similar tale is recorded in the epic of the Tibetan ethnic group, which states that when the ancient hero King Gesar slew a tiger, its body parts and organs became the plain, mountains, rivers and tribes. For centuries, tiger skins became the ultimate gift to heroes, and people made rugs with tiger images as a symbol of eminence and protection.

Although today's Chinese style themselves as the descendants of the dragon, the tiger is still given great prominence. Because of the animal's regal qualities and dominant status, in ancient China tiger imagery was believed to repel pests and ward off evil spirits.

Particularly during Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, it is the custom to equip children with ornaments and clothing bearing tiger imagery to protect them from the pests of early summer. Parents draw the character wang on their child's forehead with realgar wine to protect them from being harmed by vermin.

"The change of status between dragon and tiger is relative. The dragon is, after all, a fictional creature. It flies across the sky and takes charge of rainfall, so it has gained a superior status. Tigers exist in reality. A lot of people have seen them, or even been harmed by them. What is important is that even though tigers sit at the top of the food chain, humans can use their collective forces or weapons to defeat them," Zhu said.