Bull

[flemmings]

Ah. Hm. An interesting point. Here it is (almost) the year of the ox (go me) and I'm not sure what an ox is. Wikipedia says it's a castrated bull. (Wikipedia also tells me what a freemartin is, which is something I'd never heard of. It also says that an aurochs is an extinct kind of cattle, when I'd always assumed it was some sort of deer. Live and learn.)

But are Chinese oxen all castrated bulls? Are there uncastrated bulls in China? Were there uncastrated bulls in Spring-Autumn? Are we thinking water buffalo and not bulls at all? If there were cattle in China from early on why did China never develop a dairy culture? Oxen gore, as I know from glancing references to passges in the Talmud (no, don't ask: flypaper memory) but do Chinese oxen gore?

Of course google doesn't say (except in a dense paper about zoological classification of cattle) and anyone else who might know is busy celebrating. But when you're finished with the dumplings and all, could you tell me?

And then I'll know whether Fu Chai can look like a bull about to lower his horns.

Comments

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

The Chinese zodiac is never sex specific, and generally Chinese animal names are not sex specific. So this is just bad translation. This is the year of 牛, i.e, a bovine. The standard imagine that's conjured up is that of a water buffalo, but that's not what it means. It's a generic word that can be used to referred to anything bovine: cows, buffalo, ox, bull etc. It can be made more specific by saying 母牛，水牛，牦牛, etc.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ok, so there *are* and *were* (European defined) cows and bulls in China? Or were those terms invented to talk about western dairy cattle, and a Spring Autumn type would only know of water buffalo?

[litalex.livejournal.com]

probably only the water buffalo...