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Xiang Li 中国传统绘画

Sign 12 of twelve

Pig 豬 / 猪

Pig 豬 / 猪:浏览李湘艺术网站的十二生肖资料。本页正文暂为英文,完整译文待补充。

Last, and in no hurry

  • Generous
  • Sincere
  • Easy-going
  • Late
A white piglet laughing on a bank of pale cloud, holding a peach almost as large as itself, with two white doves in flight and two green ruyi-headed flower medallions floating beside it. Sunrise pink and blue ground. Watercolor and gouache on paper, by Xiang Li.

The Pig closes the cycle. It arrived last because it stopped for a meal and a nap on the way, which is the whole sign in one sentence: generous, sincere, fond of good company and good food, entirely unbothered about the standings.

In Chinese the pig is a prosperity animal, not a lazy one — 家, the character for home, is a pig under a roof. A household with a pig in it was a household that would eat through the winter.

The peach is the peach of long life, the doves are peace, and the piglet is laughing with its whole face. It is the most straightforwardly happy painting in the collection, and it is the last one in the cycle, which seems about right.

The name in the corner

Top right, in black: the old form of 豕 — a pig in profile, heavy in the belly, short tail down.

Why oracle-bone script →