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Eye of the tiger

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
2010-02-12 10:32

As the Year of the Tiger approaches, the animal that burns bright is revealed as having striking similarities in both Chinese and Western culture.

I was born in a year of the tiger.

When I was a child, the tiger was mainly thought of as a predator. About the most famous tiger story in China is from Outlaws of the Marsh, in which Wu Song, in his drunken bravado, single-handedly defeats a tiger attack and kills the animal in the process. It has since become the archetypal rite of passage for a young hero. Just as you have to slay a dragon in Western mythology, you'd better grapple with a tiger and knock him unconscious, literally or figuratively, to fulfil the ritual coming-of-age.

The tiger was known as man-eating, yet it was not associated with evil. In a sense, it is an animal humans have to conquer, yet do not hate. We use the tiger bone to increase our sexual performance, and Tiger Balm is essentially a panacea for all minor ailments. Tiger skin is so treasured only a lord of the jungle - colonial hunters - could use it as a seat cushion. Well, that's my impression from movies and folklore.

There was a chess game popular during my childhood years. It ranked a dozen animals in a hierarchy. The elephant is at the top of the echelon, followed by the lion, and then the tiger. The weakest is the mouse, but it can eliminate the elephant by climbing into its trunk. I didn't know then the lion was called "king of the jungle", but I understood the elephant was not something to be feared as it always lumbers. I might have given it more respect had I seen a movie with an elephant charge scene. Anyway, the real rival for the tiger seemed to be the lion.

But the lion loses big time in one crucial area: It is not one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Only when Disney released its Lion King does the tiger finally retreat, in my mind, to take its backseat in cultural consciousness.

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In northern China, the tiger has a slight image problem. If a kid is described as "tiger-headed", he is colorful but a bit slow. By natural extension, he is going to grow up into a bully rather than the class president. Fortunately, this connotation did not exist in my hometown in Zhejiang province. Adults felt I was not "tiger" enough, as I was a little timid and introverted. I have a cousin born in the same year who was always pushing around and swaggering. So, he was a much better torchbearer of the tiger spirit. Had I known there's a Cowardly Lion somewhere, my days as a not-so-brave tiger would have been more bearable.

I first encountered a Western image of my zodiac animal in William Blake's poem. "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" is a line that more than resonates. It never occurred to me to use a fiery image. In Chinese literature, the tiger could be associated with the wind as its dexterous prancing has a whooshing sound, akin to the Chinese word for tiger "hu". We say "hu hu sheng wei", conjuring up a caped hero descending in a regal manner - OK, batman in a tiger-skin cloak.

Blake also mentions the tiger's "fearful symmetry". For me, it is a symbol of virility. Tigers seem to resemble young men, always running around, testosterone-driven yet blissfully oblivious of their sexual potency. Depending on where you stand, it's to be feared or idolized. I don't know how much this has to do with the animal's fast-approaching extinction in China. But people eat tigers, partly to prevent themselves from being eaten, and partly to boost their yang energy by taking on some of the tiger's perceived qualities.

Although East and West approach the tiger differently, it is not diametrically opposite, like the dragon. The Flying Tigers, the American volunteer airmen who fought for China in its war against Japan's invasion, was a great name that sounds equally awe-inspiring in Chinese and English. Now, imagine it's changed to Flying Eagles. Of course, eagles fly. What's so unique about the name, except it derives from the American eagle?

Before William Blake painted the tiger as an animal of feral beauty, it was a figure of savage ferocity, just like ancient China. In Shakespeare's plays, Romeo, when breaking into Juliet's tomb, has manners fiercer "than empty tigers or the roaring sea". In an effort to banish Banquo's ghost, Macbeth claims he would not tremble at "the rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the Hyrcan tiger". But no one can deny its strength and agility or Henry V would not order his troops to "imitate the action of the tiger".

Human ambivalence toward the tiger is best summed up by essayist and novelist G K Chesterton, who used "terrible elegance" to describe the animal's exquisite physicality and unpredictable savagery. This is shared by both Western and Chinese cultures. When you say someone is a tiger in bed, we know perfectly well what is meant.

But the dragon-tiger dichotomy emerges in the moniker assigned to the Asian economies of Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It's called the "Four Tigers" in English, but the "Four Small Dragons" in Chinese. If we reverse them, the "Four Tigers" in Chinese would still be acceptable, albeit a bit too cute and lightweight. But "Four Dragons" in English would be way too ominous.

Nowadays when you google "tiger", you mostly get news about the disgraced golf star. I must point out Tiger Woods was not born in a year of the tiger, but would have been a great spokesman for the year, his current troubles notwithstanding.

My cousin, born in the same year as I was, was named Tiger - legally named, not just a nickname. But he is not a star. Was it laziness or aspiration on the part of his parents that gave him the same name as the zodiac year? We Chinese generally do not have this custom or we'd have thousands of Rat Zhang, Sheep Wang or Rooster Zhu. But Tiger is different. It can be brought down a peg or two when it is called a "big cat", or "the big worm" in the Wu Song story. It is wild at heart but at the same time can be thought of as a pet.

Happy Year of the Tiger!