HONG KONG — China
said goodbye to the Year of the Horse on Wednesday, and on the first
day of the new lunar year revelers welcomed the Year of the Sheep.
Or maybe the goat. Or perhaps the ram. For English speakers, it is a can of worms.
“Few ordinary Chinese are troubled by the sheep-goat distinction,” Xinhua, China’s main state-run news agency, said in its
report on the debate. “However, the ambiguity has whipped up discussion in the West.”
The
reason is that the word for the eighth animal in the Chinese zodiac’s
12-year cycle of creatures, yang in Mandarin, does not make the
distinction found in English between goats and sheep and other members
of the Caprinae subfamily. Without further qualifiers, yang might mean
any such hoofed animal that eats grass and bleats. And so Chinese news
outlets have butted heads for days on what to call this year in English,
recruiting experts to pass judgment.
“The
yang possesses a rich and complex meaning in the minds of Chinese
people,” said The Beijing Daily, mustering the kind of grandiloquence
that journalists can resort to during a slow news patch. “It has
permeated every corner of our lives. Some say that in a sense, Chinese
culture is not the culture of the dragon or the tiger, but the culture
of the yang.”
Not everyone seemed so worked up about the distinction.
“I’ve
never thought about that question before,” Chen Xufeng, an office clerk
in Beijing, told Xinhua. “Do we have to tell them apart? I’ve seen more
goats in zodiac images, but I prefer to buy a sheep mascot, as sheep
are more fluffy and lovely.”
The
prevalent theory goes that because Han Chinese culture developed in
regions where herders and goats prevailed, the zodiac talisman must be a
goat. The animal is indeed common in traditional New Year art. But
sheep have their proponents, and they have become more common in cutesy
cartoonish decorations for the celebrations.
Zhao
Shu, a folklore expert at the Beijing Institute of Culture and History,
said in a telephone interview that the debate was silly. The creature
in question arose as a general symbol of plenitude and good fortune,
partly because the Chinese character yang shares roots with the one for
auspiciousness, he said.
If English speakers are caught up on whether it is a sheep or a goat, that is their problem, Mr. Zhao added.
“This
is ridiculous,” he said. “Goat and sheep are different in French and
English, but what’s that got to do with Chinese traditional culture? In
French, it’s translated as the Year of the Goat; and in English, it’s
the Year of the Sheep.”
He
also drew a lesson about the virtues of Chinese tradition. “In Western
culture, things are subdivided into more and more detailed categories,
and that’s why Europe has still not been unified after so many years,”
he continued. “If you want to say whether it’s goat or sheep, then why
not also ask whether it’s a ewe or a ram? But Chinese culture has an
inclusive spirit and stresses harmony.”
Mr. Zhao also scoffed at the widespread notion that to be born in the Year of the Sheep, or Goat, is bad news.
Sheep
are seen by some as meek, doltish beasts. But Mr. Zhao said the
unfortunate reputation of births in those years took hold in the late
Qing dynasty, toward the end of the 19th century, when opponents of the
dynasty vilified the Empress Dowager Cixi and several other high
officials as schemers and traitors. They all happened to be born in the
Year of the Sheep, or Goat, reinforcing the belief that people born in
that year were not to be trusted.
“The
people’s personal hatred of them was transferred to views about the 12
signs,” Mr. Zhao said. “But for Chinese people going back further in
history, the sheep is really extremely auspicious. Our ancestors could
never have put an inauspicious animal in the 12 signs.”
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