In this Talking Animals feature, we interview Chiara Bocci about her research on Chinese animal lore, including Song-period “pufferfish mania,” intelligent earthworms, and the magical properties of rhinoceros horns. (We also featured her book On Feathers and Furs in our CASN Bookshelf!)
Chiara Bocci earned a Ph.D. from Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich, where she has been working since 2012. Her research on animals in ancient China and on bencao 本草 (materia medica) literature, with a special focus on philological aspects, has resulted in numerous publications and a monograph, On Feathers and Furs: The Animal Section in Duan Chengshi’s 段成式 Youyang zazu 酉陽雜俎, ca. 853. She also researches the life and work of Catholic missionaries between China and the Philippines (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries), particularly on their work of translation and their endeavour to produce and disseminate knowledge in the fields of zoology, botany, and Chinese thought.
Hi Chiara! Thank you for joining us on Talking Animals. To start, what first inspired you to include animals in your research?
The first thing that crosses my mind is the Shanhai jing 山海經, or “Book of Mountains and Seas” (c. fourth to first centuries BC). I would say that the spark was ignited by reading this fantastic, ancient Chinese cosmography where gods, monsters, but also animals play such prominent roles. It fascinated me how animals are treated in the book, since some show, in fact, very strong personalities. The fact that animals announce fortunate or ominous events, such as peace and prosperity, vs. war and famine, etc., as if they had some sort of foreknowledge, or as if they could even influence the future with their appearance, suggests an idea of power and prestige in animals. Moreover, they sometimes interact with humans in the most extraordinary, sometimes hilarious, of ways: the shan hui 山𤟤 is a sort of dog with human face, which starts laughing when it sees a human (見人則笑)! More dangerously, different animals cry like babies to lure humans and devour them (其音如嬰兒 […] 是食人). I find it particularly fascinating how not all animals in the Shanhai jing are regarded as objects to kill and consume, to sacrifice as a ritual offering, or to wear as an amulet to ward off noxious influences and diseases. Some of them are just described as living in their natural environment, with notes on their behaviour and personality.
To be honest, though, I have to admit that animals have always attracted me, well before my introduction to Chinese studies. The long summer months spent in the countryside as a child, surrounded by all sorts of animals, enjoying adventurous rides with a couple of car-loving dogs and a very stubborn goat (that clearly believed itself to be human), opened my eyes, at a very early age, to their dignity and value as individuals, each one with its own temperament. Therefore, when I first embarked on research, it only came natural to combine sinology with animals under the guidance of Prof. Roderich Ptak, who is one of the leading experts in this field.
Your research has covered a wide range of animals real, hybrid, and imagined. Could you summarise your impressions and findings from this body of work?
Probably, one of the most surprising findings is how the pufferfish (hetun yu 河豚魚) became all the rage in China, especially during the Song Dynasty, when literates sang its praises and were willing to risk their lives to eat its potentially deadly meat. So much risk and so much spilling of ink by acclaimed poets like Su Shi 蘇軾 and Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣, just for the sake of the so-called “river pig”! This was truly interesting and certainly unexpected.
Another striking finding is the presence of identical beliefs concerning animals in ancient Chinese and Western sources. Some animals have no articulation at the knee, they say, and cannot stand up if they fall down, as noted in both Youyang zazu 酉陽雜俎 and Cicero, Pliny the Elder, etc. One also finds the assumption that swallows spend winter inside wells and water streams only to re-emerge during spring, again noted in both Youyang zazu and Western sources up until the nineteenth century; and that the horn of rhinoceroses, if carved into a drinking cup, supposedly reveals the presence of poison by making the liquid bubble up, as described in the fourth-century Baopuzi 抱朴子 and different Western sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
What’s something surprising you’ve come across while researching animal terminology and lore?
Besides the “pufferfish-mania” and similar animal lore being seen in Chinese and Western sources, another thing that always strikes me is the recognition of intelligence and feelings in animals in ancient Chinese sources: elephants mourn their dead calves and rhinoceroses are sensitive to the music of strings and flutes. The Huainanzi 淮南子 (second century BC) states that “earth-eaters (earthworms) have no heart-brain, but are intelligent nonetheless (食土者無心而慧); in Baopuzi, insects fly and worms crawl and they are also capable of benevolence (蜎飛蠕動，亦能有仁).
Is there a resource or theory you’ve found particularly helpful in your research?
There are many, and I will mention here only a fraction of the resources to which I have turned for my research over and over again. I have read and used with particular admiration and gratitude the studies on Chinese animals by Berthold Laufer (for instance the long study on the rhinoceros in Prolegomena on the History of Defensive Armor (1914)) and Edward Schafer (The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (1963), The Vermilion Bird (1967), “Falconry in T’ang Times” (1958), and many more).1 Amongst the more recent publications in Western languages, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China by Roel Sterckx (2002) certainly stands out; it has to be regarded as a pioneering work published during a time in which animal studies were still considered rather marginal.2
As for Chinese sources, I would like to mention two in particular, besides the Shanhai jing: the miscellaneous work Youyang zazu by Duan Chengshi, with its ample animal section in juan 16 and the work of materia medica Bencao gangmu 本草綱目 (1596), which collects relevant information on different medicinal substances, animals included, from all sorts of previous sources.
How has research on the topic of animals in China changed during your career? What new questions are we asking now that we didn’t before?
I find that animal studies has gradually acquired more visibility. Considered a pleasant, curious, but marginal topic, it has attracted more attention in recent years, with an increase in publications and a deeper concern for animal-human interactions. Humans and animals have shared the same environment and have crossed paths in many ways throughout history. Scholars are now more aware of these deep entanglements and are asking questions on their mutual influence, such as how did human actions modify the living range of, let’s say, pachyderms such as elephants and rhinoceroses?
What questions are you looking to answer next in your research?
I would like to explore the question of the many forms of intelligence (logical, emotional, verbal, etc.) that scholars of the past have acknowledged in animals, and the ways in which they manifest this through their actions.
Finally, if you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?
I have always thought that I would love to be a red fox, if I had to be reborn in animal form. Foxes are intelligent, sociable, and extremely playful creatures, and I envy their fur and luscious tail in which they wrap up in winter. I never quite understood why they always play the role of the villain in Western and Chinese lore, so maybe if I became a fox, I would be able to find it out! Besides well-known negative stories of malevolent fox-spirits dragging innocent young men to perdition, Chinese sources offer other interesting information on foxes: according to some, they would turn their head towards their “hill” (狐死首丘), probably their native den, right before dying. This obscure, but charming habit is also something that I would love to discuss with my fox-fellows, if I were one of them!
- Berthold Laufer, Chinese Clay Figures, Part I: Prolegomena on the History of Defensive Armor (The Field Museum of Chicago, 1914); Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics (University of California Press, 1963, reprinted 1985), The Vermilion Bird: T’ang Images of the South (University of California Press, 1967), and “Falconry in T’ang Times,” T’oung Pao 46.1 (1958): 293-338. ↩︎
- Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China (State University of New York Press, 2002). ↩︎