Myth/Folklore — Chinese Tao tie
The long history of China in the past had helped to create all kinds of legends that are past down from generation to generation either orally or in the written form. Started from my childhood life, ancient Chinese mythologies and various folk stories had always been one of the things that attract me a lot.
Mythologies and folklore are traditional stories that may answer life's overarching questions or collections of fictional tales about people or animals.
Within all the creatures that are presented in the legends, have you ever heard of a kind of fearful beast, named as Tao tie? This creature eats anything and everything, alive and dead. Humans and many other organisms are all counted as it's prey. Tao tie is one of the "four evil creatures of the world" in ancient Chinese mythology, with the other three known as Hundun, Qiongqi, and Taowu. The four beasts are often represented as the disaster and evil opponents of holy organisms and appeared frequently in the Chinese classical text and folk tales.
Tao tie's outlook was been described in many different ways, yet every one of it had a really weird and scary looking. The most popular saying was that it had a human face with a goat's body, others said that its eyes grew underneath its short arms. Some legend also described it with big tiger's teeth and human's hands. However, a common description that all agree with was that it only had its head and the upper part of the body, but its lower body was disappeared for the reason that it was so greedy in eating that it even ate its own body.
Pictures of the four common beasts drawn by people based on the descriptions in ancient Chinese folk stories.
The origin of this dreadful creature that preys upon different species, however, was actually first shown to the world not by the ancient myths but on the bronze and culture jades in the pattern form. These bronze and jades were made into Chinese ritual bronze vessels known as dings, which are created and are popular during the ancient period from Shang to Zhou dynasty. On the dings, the Taotie was carved either in a simple or complex form with detailed designs. The design is usually in frontal vision and is bilaterally symmetrical. Sometimes it will appear on the surface of the dings in 2D with only the facial looks, while during other times it will be in 3D shape standing on the edge of the dings as a small statue. A common thing for every Tao tie from the past is that they all consist of strong facial expressions. As people from the past said that a person's face is his or her own silent language, the sculptor always paid full attention and create a lot of details on Tao tie's face. The joy, the anger, and the sorrow expressions are all revealed on the face, as well as solemn, ferocious, insidious, mysterious and other attitudes.
The map of the Shang and Zhou dynasty.
Tao tie on a ding keep in the Shanghai Art Museum.
Till this point, a question might appear in your mind: since Tao tie is such an evil demon, why did the ancients still wanted it to be carved on the important ritual equipment?
According to various reasons from different communities, some said that due to the fact that it ate everything and anything, people hope that it can eat all the bad luck and scared the enemies away, while some also believed that these beasts can help them to absorb more wealth and money while they were eating things around. There was also another mystery saying that in ancient times, many unexplained phenomena are attributed to the power of God by people. Therefore, sometimes people believed that these creatures were not meant to scare, but to communicate with God due to the mysterious power that they represented.
Since the existence of this horrifying beast had always been a mystery passed down in the legend and folktales by the ancients, Tao tie became an attractive theme in modern movies as well as many famous novels. For example, just a few years ago, a movie called "The Great Wall" was released in China. This historical fantasy action movie was filmed along the Great Wall in 2016. The director of this movie hoped to create the plot based on the mysterious origins and legends behind the Chinese ancient architecture of Great Wall, and at the same time, added elements such as action, science fiction, and ancient Chinese culture to enrich the movie. In this movie, Tao ties appeared in huge groups like an army lead by a leader called Queen (a bee-like monster), trying to break through the Great Wall every 60 years to get into China for the massive amount of "food". In the movie, the myth of Tao tie started from 2000 years ago, when people around the world were suffering under a greedy and ruthless emperor. Due to this circumstance, God shot down a meteorite glowing with the green light on Earth, and the first Tao tie was generated from it. Since then, China suffered under the attack of the Tao tie army once every 60 years as the punishment to admonish people the sins of greed.
Scenes with Tao tie in the movie " Great Wall".
In the movie, Tao tie still represented as the enemy of human beings.
All in all, I can't really state that the legend of this fearful creature was real and it really did appear in the long history. However, I have to say that all the myths and the adaptation movies based on Tao tie are something that will really make people feel as if it's much more than realistic. In conclusion, I hope that through this article, people's curiosity toward the ancient beast Tao tie will become stronger and stronger.