China’s Magical Creatures Weekly Report #2

• Lauren B
• 0
• on Sep 16, 2022

This week we read an article about yinyang, it mainly focused on how while yinyang are seen as opposites they need the other to exist and remain balanced. It stresses the importance of how neither yin nor yang is complete without the other. Some parts of the article I found interesting were the meanings of yinyang and how you can still see that pattern/meaning in everyday life. Like how yang represents movement and the day, essentially a time when you should be working, and yin represents rest and the night, the time after work when you’re just focusing on yourself. We also read a pdf that talked about the five phases and what things correlate to each phase. The phases must be respected if you want them to work with you, if you disrespect them they will always work against you. Another document we read centered around different stories that in some way all had to do with the five phases/balance. It really stood out to me how different these stories are from traditional American ones, these stories all have a mythical part that you just won’t find in American stories. Lastly, we read certain excerpts from the book “The Classic of Mountains and Seas” and it really struck me how strange some of the creatures are and yet how normal they are too. For instance one of the creatures in my excerpt was a parrot and another similar to a dove

Honestly, there’s nothing else I need to currently complete for this course. I’ve finished all of the expected assignments and readings aside from the ones for next week.

A lot of the questions I have pertain to the five phases. For instance, what is the importance of the number five in Chinese myth/history? How did it come to be that symbolic? Also, how were the correlations for each phase decided, was it based on yinyang?