No less august a person than Matt Damon has been in Cathay. If you’d like, see this 4 minute 47 second proof. At about 1 minute 42 seconds is a pretty good view.
Matt Damon, like Wilhelmina Wang and Li Bai, went the long way around, just in opposite directions. Through the Taklamakan and the Gobi deserts, using lodestones (Matt Damon) and compasses (Wilhelmina Wang and Li Bai, separately).
All of them, Matt Damon, Wilhelmina Wang, and Li Bai, had to fight taoties in the sand. Luckily, all three had excellent martial skills. Wilhelmina also had a Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus), which was nice.
What are taoties?
Taoties 饕餮 are one of the Four Perils of Chinese mythology. The others are hundun 混沌, qiongqi 窮奇, and taowu 檮杌. I won’t put up pictures here because it’s Easter Sunday (April 17, 2022). That’s how fierce they are.
There are good mythological animals, too. The Four Symbols, guardians of the four cardinal points. They are the azure dragon of the east (qinglong 青龍), the white tiger of the west (baihu 白虎), the vermillion bird of the south (zhuque 朱雀), and the black tortoise of the north (xuanwu 玄武). When the cardinal points are listed in this order: east-west-south-north (dong-xi-nan-bei 東西南北), the phrase means everywhere.
We’ll come to those.
But for today, let’s have another Chinese song:
Love & mischievousness,
Your Fei
P.S. Happy Easter friends! Here’s a 1930’s Chinese Easter illustration from Catholic University Peking: