If you look closely at the guardian lions at Portland's Chinatown gate, you'll note that one appears to be nonchalantly crushing a smaller lion underfoot. I had a "Wait, what?" moment and took a few photos. I was about to go on about rooting for the underdog/underlion, and wondering flippantly what message it sends to kids these days and wondering where the public busybody outrage is and so forth. If Wikipedia is to be believed, though, the small lion is a cub and the large one is its mother, and there's nothing at all alarming about it, and who the hell are you to question the parenting skills of legendary mythological lions anyway?
So in short the whole original idea for this post is pretty much shot. I still had these photos though, and I thought for some reason they were still worth posting (in part because this humble blog got a writeup this morning at Dave Knows Portland, as a Portland blog you aren't reading -- although obviously you are reading it, or at least looking at the photos -- and my latest post just happened to be some fair-to-middling Vegas vacation photos, just my luck). Also, you have to admit it the whole thing (the lions, I mean) looks kind of peculiar even when you know what they're supposed to be depicting.
2 comments :
interesting, because where I'm from in Okinawa we have Shiisa lions, often in pairs, male&female (although not always) and the female has a ball under her foot. I had to search around (starting with the term Shiisa, which would inevitably lead to the Chinese versions) and found this: http://hubpages.com/hub/Feng-Shui-Fu-Dogs-Chinese-Door-God-for-Protection
Ahhh, matriarchy. Until Confucian order dictates became very prominent in East Asia, we had a long history of mothers dominating the home -- thus, the protective lions reflected this at the gates or public entrances.
So, no, nothing malicious...
perhaps it's just late and I'm not reading very well right now, but Wikipedia doesn't explain the ball or cub under the female foot. Although that's not the only question I've had about these lions (why doesn't the lion's open mouth let in bad spirits, rather than keep them out?)....and I seem to usually get mixed up re: which is male, or female...
anyway, I'm wondering if they'll move that gate down to 82nd, ha!
sigh, good nite!
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