Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to blow your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe mcformix. So Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: a horse, a rat, a dragon, and a metal pig
Speaker 1: walk into a bar. Okay, the dragon says I'm a dragon.
Speaker 1: Everybody else leave and they do because he's a dragon.
Speaker 1: Well that would that would make sense. We're of course
Speaker 1: talking about the Chinese zodiac here, and you basically just
Speaker 1: described my family. Yeah, because I am my zodiac sign.
Speaker 1: The Chinese zodiac is horse, my son's is dragon, my
Speaker 1: my wife's is actually pig. But for the longest she
Speaker 1: thought she was a rat. How can you be confused?
Speaker 1: I thought it was just the year you were born. Um,
Speaker 1: it's easy to make that mistake, especially if you know
Speaker 1: you're just sort of going on a surface level understanding
Speaker 1: of it. Particularly the surface in question is a place
Speaker 1: man at a Chinese restaurants niet That is exactly where
Speaker 1: I learned about the Chinese zodiac first when I was
Speaker 1: a child, and they're probably the early nineteen nineties. I
Speaker 1: remember my family was one time meeting at a Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant and the place mat at my seat had all
Speaker 1: the drawings of the animals and years listed under them,
Speaker 1: and that's where I got to find out that I
Speaker 1: am a tiger, which sounded really cool at the time,
Speaker 1: but now it I find out that that's not such
Speaker 1: a cool thing. Yeah, it gets a little more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. And and uh and in terms of just
Speaker 1: being able to easily mistake what your animal might be,
Speaker 1: it's because the Chinese zodiac is an astrological birth chart
Speaker 1: based upon the Looni solar calendar year. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: just match the solar calendar that we use right the
Speaker 1: months or lunar, but the years are solar, so that
Speaker 1: means it's a little off from the Gregorian calendar. And
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a drift on the relative
Speaker 1: start and stop points. So if you just look at
Speaker 1: the animal name and a year, you could get it wrong.
Speaker 1: If you have a birthday in January February, Um, where
Speaker 1: we see this overlap, and your wife does have a
Speaker 1: birthday in January February, Yeah, she has a February birthday.
Speaker 1: So for the longest she thought that she was a rat,
Speaker 1: but in in in actuality she was pig. Now there
Speaker 1: are also elements associated with certain years. Right, So she's
Speaker 1: not just a pig, she's what a wooden pig and
Speaker 1: earth pig. Oh, she's a metal pig, which I think
Speaker 1: is the probably it sounds pretty good to me. Metal gear,
Speaker 1: solid metal pig. Yeah, they're they're at different astrological versions
Speaker 1: of each one. So you know, metal pig, water pig,
Speaker 1: would pig, fire pig, and earth pig would be the
Speaker 1: complete pig collection. Uh. And just to to give everyone
Speaker 1: an idea of where we are right now as we're
Speaker 1: recording this in late January two thousand sixteen, we are
Speaker 1: about to enter into the year of the fire monkey.
Speaker 1: What what was this previous year? Here? We're exiting the
Speaker 1: year of the goat. Okay, so bye bye goat. All
Speaker 1: babies born today still goats, but pretty soon they will
Speaker 1: be fire monkeys instead, that's right. Yeah, there are twelve
Speaker 1: different animals involved in the zodiac. Uh, and they go
Speaker 1: in a particular or you have rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog,
Speaker 1: and then pig and then it goes back around. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we'll get to know those animals a little bit
Speaker 1: more as the episode goes on, but we should have
Speaker 1: a little disclaimer here at the beginning. If you're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I thought we were gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about science in the Science podcast. So we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about Chinese astrology in this episode. But
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that we're not necessarily endorsing Chinese astrology
Speaker 1: or any form of astrology or divination as an accurate
Speaker 1: tool for learning about reality, but instead examining it as
Speaker 1: a thing that exerts a powerful influence over human culture
Speaker 1: and behavior. Yeah, the mythology g and the symbolism is fascinating,
Speaker 1: and it's also potent in Eastern culture, and we can
Speaker 1: actually study the ramifications out of it from an economic standpoint,
Speaker 1: from birthrate standpoint. Um, it's all really interesting stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're rolling your eyes at the astrology,
Speaker 1: bear with us, because we're gonna get two numbers. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get to the science. Okay, we should check in
Speaker 1: real quick with what the stuff to blow your minds
Speaker 1: animal signs are before we move on. So, as we said,
Speaker 1: I'm a tiger, but it turns out I'm married to
Speaker 1: a rat. Rats run run strong in this world, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate their power and craftiness. Our other host on
Speaker 1: this podcast, Christian Christian Seger, is a snake married to
Speaker 1: a rabbit, which sounds like a very fortuitous union. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh no, no, what are you again? See a
Speaker 1: fire pig? I don't think we know, we know he's
Speaker 1: not a metal pig, but I'm not sure where he
Speaker 1: falls in line with the with the other descriptors here.
Speaker 1: He's a magic pig maybe. Okay. So, as we said,
Speaker 1: there are twelve signs in the Chinese zodiac, and if
Speaker 1: you're familiar, primarily with the Western zodiac, there will be
Speaker 1: some similarities and some differences. Now in the Western zodiac,
Speaker 1: we primarily judge things by the time of the year
Speaker 1: that you were born. It's seasonal in nature. And I
Speaker 1: think there are some other elements to the traditional Chinese
Speaker 1: astrology right there. There are things about the time of
Speaker 1: the day you were born or the time of year.
Speaker 1: But this this one thing that makes it onto the
Speaker 1: Chinese place mats sort of the easily recognizable large scale
Speaker 1: view of Chinese birth characteristics. In in this cultural form
Speaker 1: of astrology is based on the year you were born,
Speaker 1: and there there are twelve years in this cycle. That
Speaker 1: they are those twelve animals, And what's the story? Where
Speaker 1: do these animals come from? And where do we get
Speaker 1: these ideas about what their personality characteristics are? Well, this
Speaker 1: is the way the story goes. And this is just
Speaker 1: one version of the story. So if you grew up
Speaker 1: with this or have encountered in a book somewhere, you
Speaker 1: may have a slightly different version in your head. But
Speaker 1: it rolls out like this, according to the legend the
Speaker 1: Jade Emperor. So who's Who's the Jade Emperor. He's a
Speaker 1: He's the heavenly Grandfather. He's a mythological ruler, very important
Speaker 1: in Taoism. He's an emperor in a myth rich ancient time. Okay,
Speaker 1: and he wants to create a method of recording the
Speaker 1: passage of time. So he does the logical thing. He
Speaker 1: organizes a swim race on his birthday and invites a
Speaker 1: bunch of animals. Okay, And now are these all water
Speaker 1: animals or they finished? No, none of them were. They're
Speaker 1: the ones we've been talking about before. Yes, pigs and
Speaker 1: goats and stuff and plus plus cat was also invited
Speaker 1: according to the version I read, so so that would
Speaker 1: make it thirteen animals. Right, yes, but as we're gonna see,
Speaker 1: things aren't gonna really work out for the cat all
Speaker 1: that well. And then this is this fun story. By
Speaker 1: the way, I actually acted this out with my son
Speaker 1: yesterday using toy animals. So if if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you need a rainy day activity for your your child,
Speaker 1: I recommend this. That's so beautiful. Okay, so let's go
Speaker 1: roll it, Jade Emperor's says, go, you know, the start
Speaker 1: sort of pistol goes off. Cat and rat are standing there.
Speaker 1: They're the slowest swimmers, so what they do is they
Speaker 1: asked to ride on the ox. But then once they're
Speaker 1: out in the water, the rat pushes the cat off
Speaker 1: into the water and the cat as I guess, washed
Speaker 1: away by the current. And uh. And then the ox
Speaker 1: moves in and the rat jumps off of the ox
Speaker 1: is back and gets there first. The first place goes
Speaker 1: to to rat. Okay, so the oxes fording the river
Speaker 1: like an Oregon trail, and the rat rides on his back,
Speaker 1: jumps ahead. Sort of cheats. Is this maybe sort of cheating? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cheating, but hen he's also using his intellect and
Speaker 1: he's using he comes up with a creative way. He
Speaker 1: knows he's not a great swimmer. He knows the ox
Speaker 1: is pretty good. This seems like a logical plant. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: rats are crafty. They're like Templeton in Charlotte's Web exactly.
Speaker 1: So next comes the tiger, just you know, plunges head
Speaker 1: first across and wait a minute, can tiger swim? The
Speaker 1: cat can swim? Why can the tiger swim? Well, the
Speaker 1: cat can swim. The cat was just pushed off. Not
Speaker 1: a good it's not a good swimmer. The tiger can swim,
Speaker 1: makes it across. Next comes the rabbit. Rabbits not a
Speaker 1: good swimmer, but the rabbit crosses the river by hopping
Speaker 1: on the stones. Then comes dragon and dragons. Of course
Speaker 1: is gonna be very important. We're gonna discuss dragon in
Speaker 1: in more depth here in a bit. But being a
Speaker 1: flying cosmic creature, he could have easily come in first,
Speaker 1: but along the way he realized he needed to stop
Speaker 1: and generate some rain to control the weather and then
Speaker 1: continue on his way. So he wasn't even really that
Speaker 1: concerned with winning this thing. He had more important duties
Speaker 1: to attend to write, so he's a magnanimous runner up.
Speaker 1: He could have easily won by flying, but he he
Speaker 1: had other things on his agenda exactly. Now next comes, uh, well,
Speaker 1: my sign and Christian sign. Uh so, here comes snake
Speaker 1: and horse. Alright, now, horse pretty good swimmer, So horses
Speaker 1: gonna gonna just swim across the river. Snake sneaks aboard,
Speaker 1: wraps around the horse's leg, and then when the horse
Speaker 1: is about to climb out of the river and earn
Speaker 1: its place, horse sees the snake freaks out because horses
Speaker 1: are afraid of snakes, and the snake jumps off and
Speaker 1: secures the next place in the line, followed by the horse.
Speaker 1: It's a little trickery on the snake's part. Okay, I
Speaker 1: like these trickster animals. Now next comes in this order goat, monkey,
Speaker 1: and rooster. But the interesting thing here is that they
Speaker 1: all apparently work rather well together, and the Jade Emperor
Speaker 1: is very appreciative. This is a good, good teamwork. These
Speaker 1: three do they build a raft? Did I read that?
Speaker 1: I believe so. I think that's in some of the version,
Speaker 1: that that's their their method of teamwork. Otherwise, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, they could pile on each other's heads or
Speaker 1: something and walk across that smart. Okay, who's next, Well,
Speaker 1: next comes dog, and Dog is the strongest swimmer of
Speaker 1: the bunch, but he's also easily distracted. So basically he
Speaker 1: just played and splashed in the water for most of
Speaker 1: the race and then realized, oh I need to actually
Speaker 1: get across. Man, are dogs great? And then come pig,
Speaker 1: who rather stereotypically here falls asleep after eating during the journey,
Speaker 1: so he's a very late arrival to the other side.
Speaker 1: So this is in the classic Tortoise and the Hair story,
Speaker 1: the pig is the hair. In this version, he just
Speaker 1: decides to take a nap. Yeah, yeah, and uh uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally, finally, the cat makes its way across
Speaker 1: the river after being betrayed by the rat earlier. But
Speaker 1: the cat is too late to qualify, so the cat
Speaker 1: does not make it into the official Chinese zodiac and
Speaker 1: is it's instead just left on the outside hating the
Speaker 1: rat for all eternity. Man, that's harsh. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a fun little story. It's it doesn't
Speaker 1: give a perfect description of all the the the the
Speaker 1: astrological significance of each animal. It gives you a kind
Speaker 1: of a base understanding and it's far better than some
Speaker 1: of the other There's actually one version where apparently the
Speaker 1: Buddha simply calls all the animals together in names years
Speaker 1: after them, which sounds like a pretty boring party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why not have a river race? And you can't make
Speaker 1: a reality show out of Buddha naming people? Yeah, So, John,
Speaker 1: let's just roll through these, uh, these various animals just
Speaker 1: one final time here to to just lay out their
Speaker 1: positive and negative attributes. Yeah, because we will be talking
Speaker 1: about in this episode the personality characteristics that are typically
Speaker 1: attributed to each of these animals in the twelve year cycle.
Speaker 1: If you're born under the year, these are the attributes
Speaker 1: that are supposed to belong to you. So the first
Speaker 1: one we've got is the rat. Now what do they
Speaker 1: say about the rat? Well, the rat is innovative, opportunistic,
Speaker 1: very organized, but prone to uh letting his temper get
Speaker 1: out of the out of control and possibly his or
Speaker 1: her agreed. Now, I've got to give credit where credit
Speaker 1: is due. I was reading this out loud to my
Speaker 1: wife Rachel last night, and she was like, sounds like
Speaker 1: Walter White from Breaking Bad. I was like, Walter White,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. That is the perfect rat. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's a good sort of modern fictional embodiment. Uh. Next
Speaker 1: up the the Ox. Of course, oxes honest, conservative, patient,
Speaker 1: but the Ox can be stubborn when pushed and can
Speaker 1: be slow to start things. Now, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of fictional versions we came up with to match this.
Speaker 1: Sounds kind of like Ned Stark from Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: kind of an honest, respectable, but conservative person. Another option
Speaker 1: I came up with is Ellen Ripley from the Alien series.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, you know, because she is essentially
Speaker 1: a She's one of the few heroes who's really a
Speaker 1: rule follower. She's all about obeying protocol. We need to
Speaker 1: do the right thing here and not break quarantine. You know.
Speaker 1: She she's conservative, but she's patient, she's on top of things,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't want to budge from her position. And
Speaker 1: unlike the astrological Ox, she actually gets the cat across
Speaker 1: the river. Okay. Next we have the tiger, right, this
Speaker 1: is mine. So they say about the tiger that the
Speaker 1: tiger is powerful, brave, and risk taker, but can also
Speaker 1: be very brash and offensive. Full feather is caused trouble.
Speaker 1: So what came to my mind is Fox Mulder from
Speaker 1: The X Files. Oh yeah, you know, he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a risk taker, he's courageous, he stands up for what
Speaker 1: he believes in, but he really just makes people mad.
Speaker 1: He says the wrong thing and he makes offensive comments
Speaker 1: all the time. Okay, I feel like, you know the
Speaker 1: tiger characters when we probably see a lot in fiction. Um,
Speaker 1: because we like we like characters like that. We like
Speaker 1: our characters to be strong and confident. But I also
Speaker 1: have certain pitfalls. The one that comes to my mind,
Speaker 1: and this is because I'm currently watching a MCS Halt
Speaker 1: and catch Fire. Lee pays his character Joe McMillan um
Speaker 1: brilliant risk taker but also just a life wrecking idiot
Speaker 1: at times. Alright, Next up we have the Rabbit. Gentle, talented, diplomatic,
Speaker 1: but maybe a little bit shy and sentimental. Okay, what
Speaker 1: have you got for the rabbit? The only thing, the
Speaker 1: only one that came to mind instantly here is Luna
Speaker 1: love Good in Harry Potter. Oh that's a pretty good one,
Speaker 1: all right. Next is in it very important one dragon imagination, energetic, dramatic,
Speaker 1: but can be moody, can be a perfectionist, and uh,
Speaker 1: and of course, as we'll discussed, can their destructive elements
Speaker 1: to the dragon as well. Huh. You know, I had
Speaker 1: a hard time thinking of a good example of a
Speaker 1: dragon in fiction. One that obviously came to mind is
Speaker 1: another one from Game of Thrones, de Naris targ Arian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then again, I don't know how well she fits
Speaker 1: that because I don't really think of her as dramatic
Speaker 1: or even necessarily moody, but certainly that that imagination and energy,
Speaker 1: and uh, she's very determined. Yeah, I think she she
Speaker 1: is prone to being a little moody, especially later in
Speaker 1: the series. Yeah, I guess so, but yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: a perfect fit though. Of course, she is the mother
Speaker 1: of dragons, so it seems like it should fit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have too many Game of Thrones characters in
Speaker 1: this It's just such a rich world to draw various
Speaker 1: character personalities from. I guess. Yeah, Well the next from Snake.
Speaker 1: The snake is graceful, intuitive and wise, but prone to
Speaker 1: stinginess and unscrupulous behavior. I guess yeah, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: this is what I was referring to. Hear, because it
Speaker 1: sounds like the spider Lord Veris from Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: Old Baldy. He is graceful, he is intuitive, and he
Speaker 1: is wise, but he's not necessarily so full of scruples. Well,
Speaker 1: the next one is horse my sign. And this one's
Speaker 1: uh characterized by being energetic, spirited, optimistic, independent, but prone
Speaker 1: to impatience and unfinished tasks. Does that sound like you
Speaker 1: to you? Well, as we'll get into later. Just about
Speaker 1: any of these, you can see yourself in them if
Speaker 1: you want to. That's a good point. Yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. So I do see a bit of myself
Speaker 1: in that. Um And in terms of fictional characters, makes
Speaker 1: me think of Clive Owens, Dr John Thackeray on the Nick,
Speaker 1: who is, you know, very energetic and spirited, but does
Speaker 1: not have the patients for rigorous scientific investigation. And we'll
Speaker 1: also just completely abandon a task if it's not really
Speaker 1: working out. You gotta be you gotta be cautious about
Speaker 1: those people who have an emphasis on getting things done.
Speaker 1: You know. I haven't seen the Nick, but I've heard
Speaker 1: it's very good. Oh, I love it. I I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. Um. You know, for individuals who weren't too
Speaker 1: squeamish about a turn of the century surgery scene. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about how about the next one? Goat? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they say the goat is loving, gentle, and creative, but
Speaker 1: maybe shy and reluctant to directness and set in their ways. Well,
Speaker 1: this one I thought was kind of difficult because that's
Speaker 1: not really that this type of central character you tend
Speaker 1: to encounter in a story. But it did make me
Speaker 1: think of Donnie from The Big Lebowski. Yeah, Donnie who
Speaker 1: loves surfing. He was sweet, yeah, loving and creative. Al right.
Speaker 1: Next we have the monkey, when again we're about to
Speaker 1: enter into monkey. Uh smart, happy, curious, energetic, but prone
Speaker 1: to over confidence and all the pitfalls that come with
Speaker 1: over confidence. So the one that came to my mind
Speaker 1: based on this is Tony Stark from Iron And So
Speaker 1: this is a guy who who likes to have a
Speaker 1: good time. He's curious, he's full of energy, he's very smart,
Speaker 1: but he's kind of full of himself. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's a good a good fit, all right. Next up
Speaker 1: we have a rooster. Rooster is punctual, reliable, independent, but
Speaker 1: maybe a bit conceded. This one was a hard one
Speaker 1: for me to really think about in terms of modern fiction.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, how many characters can you think of
Speaker 1: that are known for punctuality, yeah, and being vain without
Speaker 1: being just like movie vain or Dorian gray vein. The
Speaker 1: one that came to mind, though, is Christoph Waltz character Dr.
Speaker 1: King Schultz in Django and Chain, because he's a plant,
Speaker 1: great planner, he's loyal, but he's ultimately brought down by
Speaker 1: his own form of vanity, moral of a you know,
Speaker 1: a cultural intellectual vanity, the physical vanity. He can't walk away.
Speaker 1: He's got to make his point. He's got to make
Speaker 1: his point, even if it's the most it's the most
Speaker 1: disastrous choice in the movie. Okay, so we got two left.
Speaker 1: One of them is the dog. And what do they
Speaker 1: say about the dog? The dog is gregarious, honest, fun, loyal,
Speaker 1: prone to worrying, you know, whimpering in the corner. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting combination of things. Two people came to mind
Speaker 1: for me. One of them is another Big Lebowski character,
Speaker 1: would be the dude from The Big Oldowski. So he's gregarious, honest, fun, loyal,
Speaker 1: he's all those things, but he also worries a lot.
Speaker 1: He's worried that they're gonna cut off various parts of
Speaker 1: his body. Another one that came to my mind is say,
Speaker 1: have you seen Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? Serious Kimmy Schmidt. She's
Speaker 1: a dog here, I think, I mean she's a in
Speaker 1: the Chinese Zodia accents. Very much gregarious, honest, loyal, fun
Speaker 1: and prone to worrying. Another one that maybe came to
Speaker 1: my mind is grom It from Wallace and Grommet, but
Speaker 1: that he's kind of disqualified because he's actually a dog,
Speaker 1: all right. And then finally last place, Pig. Pig is noble, strong,
Speaker 1: fiercely loyal to family and friends, though they can be
Speaker 1: difficult at times and can be a bit reckless. This
Speaker 1: is this is another one. I got a credit to
Speaker 1: my wife Rachel. I was talking to her about this
Speaker 1: last night and she was like, Mrs Vorhees from Freddie
Speaker 1: but a strong mother, right yeah? Um? Well. Another mother
Speaker 1: that comes to mind from Game of Thrones Cercy Lanister, who,
Speaker 1: for all her faults, and she has many, she's very
Speaker 1: loyal to her children specifically, and pretty much only to
Speaker 1: her children. You know, it's all about protecting her children,
Speaker 1: and she can be a bit reckless outside of that, Robert,
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Speaker 1: dreaming off. Okay, so that has been the basic crash
Speaker 1: course on the very popularly broadly accessible version of the
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac. But now we want to get more into
Speaker 1: the specifics about the scientificly measurable effects of belief in
Speaker 1: the Chinese zodiac, what people think about it, how it
Speaker 1: influences culture, and what economic and sociological influences it might have.
Speaker 1: And I know what a lot of you are thinking
Speaker 1: too at this point. It is one thing to think
Speaker 1: about as seasonal zodiac having as an effect, right, you
Speaker 1: know this and it was born in winter, this one
Speaker 1: in summer, etcetera. But you know, how could everybody in
Speaker 1: a single year have the same basic personality type. It
Speaker 1: just it's unbelievable. It's just ridiculous. Really, Like, everybody born
Speaker 1: in the year of the Dragon is not going to
Speaker 1: be this massive go getter leader person. Uh, everybody born
Speaker 1: in the year of the Rat is not going to
Speaker 1: be unscrewed. It's it's not gonna be this unscrupulous individual. Um.
Speaker 1: So how does it work? How does it end up,
Speaker 1: you know, playing into our perceptions of self, uh, perceptions
Speaker 1: of what our offspring should be. And and you know,
Speaker 1: even how we should hire people. Yes, and now we're
Speaker 1: going to turn our attention to the dragon child, the
Speaker 1: children born in the year of the Dragon. Why is
Speaker 1: the year of the dragon considered special in the Chinese zodiac? Ah, well,
Speaker 1: this this is a great question. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: promise I'm not going to spend an excessive amount of
Speaker 1: time here. We're gonna maybe do an episode on dragons
Speaker 1: later on. Um. But but just to be brief about it.
Speaker 1: You know, the Western dragon is this earthy, wormy, off
Speaker 1: and downright infernal creature. The Eastern dragon is the celestial creature.
Speaker 1: So there's a big difference here because in in Western
Speaker 1: mythology of the dragon is very often a monster, right,
Speaker 1: It's a thing that must be fought or defeated. It's
Speaker 1: a thing that causes havoc. It's it's a threat, and
Speaker 1: it often is not very sometimes even not very sentient.
Speaker 1: I mean, it depends on which mythology you're going with.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a big monstrous thing that's gross and
Speaker 1: you don't want it around, right. Yeah, it's coiling up
Speaker 1: out of the ground, whereas the celestial dragon of the East,
Speaker 1: the Chinese dragon, it's coming out of the sky. It's
Speaker 1: controlling the weather, it's controlling the flow of the rivers,
Speaker 1: it's controlling the ocean. It's all about potency and strength.
Speaker 1: It's a divine creature. It's sometimes a bearer of gods
Speaker 1: and demi gods, but often the dragon itself is viewed
Speaker 1: as a god or demi god in terms of its power.
Speaker 1: It's not only an important creature among the Han people,
Speaker 1: the primary ethnic group in the in China, but also
Speaker 1: for the other fifty six ethnic groups. The dragon is
Speaker 1: is old and just and pre dates the other religions
Speaker 1: and philosophies that flowed into China, such as Taoism, Buddhism,
Speaker 1: um Islam, etcetera. So it sounds like the the listeners
Speaker 1: who are familiar with the Western dragon just we're all
Speaker 1: going to have this stumbling block in our understanding of
Speaker 1: the significance of the dragon in Chinese culture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know so often that the dragon plays into
Speaker 1: creation myths. One in particular that I like the Miao
Speaker 1: people of southwest China, believe that the divine dragon lived
Speaker 1: in a cave and a bunch of monkeys came to
Speaker 1: the cave, and the dragon breathed on the monkeys and
Speaker 1: turn them into humans. That also sounds like a perfectly
Speaker 1: adaptable creation myth of humanity. If if you're a person
Speaker 1: who wants to fuse a traditional creation myth with modern
Speaker 1: evolutionary theory. Yeah, indeed, I mean it sounds like you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm instantly imagining a dragon showing up in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one of Space Odyssey. Um. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I should also point out that occasionally you do have
Speaker 1: an evil dragon or a very destructive dragon, but for
Speaker 1: the for the most part, even if they're destructive, it
Speaker 1: has more to do with their tie to like primal
Speaker 1: forces of nature any thing. Um. Another thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind about the dragon is that they're basically two
Speaker 1: different ways to look at what their composition is. But
Speaker 1: you have to think we we have such a clear
Speaker 1: idea in our mind of what a dragon is, even
Speaker 1: an Eastern dragon. It's a huge lizard with wings that
Speaker 1: breathes fire. Yeah, And and it's very ornate, and we
Speaker 1: tend not to think about, you know, what is this
Speaker 1: composed of? But according to an excellent book, A Handbook
Speaker 1: of Chinese Mythology by um uh Lee Yang ming On
Speaker 1: and Jessica Anderson Turner, um either two ways to look
Speaker 1: at one. One is that a dragon is basically crocodile, tornado,
Speaker 1: lightning river, all sort of put together. But you can
Speaker 1: also see the dragon as a composite of various fanciful
Speaker 1: images of other important creatures, creatures that were important to
Speaker 1: various tribes in ancient China that were then integrated. UM
Speaker 1: so that you know, there's several different types of Chinese
Speaker 1: dragon as the myths rollout over the centuries, but you'll
Speaker 1: see interesting descriptions of their composed composite parts. Head of
Speaker 1: a horse, tail of a snake, ears of a deer,
Speaker 1: horns of an ox, rabbit's eyes, clams, abdomen, A second
Speaker 1: clams abdomen I mean the abdomen of a clam, or
Speaker 1: an abdomen just covered in clamshells. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like both the interpretations of fish scales, tiger pause, eagle talents.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to think to me, I can't help
Speaker 1: but think, well, to what extent is not only the
Speaker 1: dragon the only mythological creature on the zodiac, he is
Speaker 1: also composed of elements from various other animals. It's the
Speaker 1: best of all possible world. It's like like an animal voltron.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the dragon is big business. Um. People of
Speaker 1: China often think of themselves as the children of the dragon.
Speaker 1: The five claud dragon was an exclusive symbol of later dynasties,
Speaker 1: the Chang dynasty from nineteen eleven. The flag featured a
Speaker 1: coiled dragon against a yellow background. So the dragon is
Speaker 1: just inherently tied with Chinese culture. Okay, so you can
Speaker 1: definitely see why the dragon carries a lot of mythological
Speaker 1: and cultural significance. But what is its specifically supposed to
Speaker 1: mean for a child born in the year of a dragon?
Speaker 1: Because all of the animals we described in that long
Speaker 1: list of the zodiac, they all had admirable characteristics, and
Speaker 1: the dragon just seemed like another one of them with
Speaker 1: some kind of general, vague admirable characteristics listed. So, so
Speaker 1: what what makes a dragon special? I mean, basically, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can list off a bunch of adjectives like honest,
Speaker 1: courage is powerful, sensitive, But basically they're a go getter.
Speaker 1: Like they are, they're the They're the kid that you want,
Speaker 1: you want your child to be this dragon that is
Speaker 1: fierce enough to uh to win it life, but also
Speaker 1: you know, humble and important enough to not get you know,
Speaker 1: to not fall into the rats, the situation of sort
Speaker 1: of cheating to get to the head of the line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is primarily it is an animal that is
Speaker 1: powerful and can get things done and will move to
Speaker 1: the head of the pack, but is also concerned with duty, right,
Speaker 1: with with helping others and with doing what it needs
Speaker 1: to do. You said, it stopped to make the rain,
Speaker 1: and that's why I didn't win. It just wasn't all
Speaker 1: that bothered about winning. According to to Chinese strology, the
Speaker 1: dragon that's who you want leading your company, right, leading
Speaker 1: your nation, not one of those tigers. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: tigers another one that you could maybe think of as
Speaker 1: a go getter. Remember that they're they're courageous, they're powerful,
Speaker 1: they can get things done, but there is also their
Speaker 1: negative characteristics associated with the tiger, And in some Chinese cultures,
Speaker 1: it seems like, especially in like Singapore and Taiwan, and
Speaker 1: maybe Hong Kong that the tiger is considered an undesirable
Speaker 1: birth sign, or at least it has been in the past.
Speaker 1: There was a two thousand eleven article by Yen's Kastner
Speaker 1: in The Asia Times called Tiger Throttling Taiwan's birth Room,
Speaker 1: and it it says that it lists some years of
Speaker 1: the tiger. It says, whoever is born in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, nineteen seventy four, nineteen eighty six, my
Speaker 1: birth year or nineteen tends to question authority and is
Speaker 1: therefore likely to cause trouble for himself, his family, or
Speaker 1: his employers at some stage in life. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: this was also the article that pointed out that some
Speaker 1: firms would actually hire a fortune teller to go through, um,
Speaker 1: the applications that were coming in, to go through the
Speaker 1: resumes and look at the birth years. Yeah. Oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in order to prevent tigers from coming in and
Speaker 1: wrecking your office place. You know. Another thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: is that the tiger is different than all of the
Speaker 1: other animals in the zodiac in one important respect. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's the the only real meat eater, I mean,
Speaker 1: the the only real man eater rather on the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe you could in some wild circumstances, maybe
Speaker 1: a pig or a dog or something could attack a person,
Speaker 1: but the tiger is the only one that's a definite
Speaker 1: human predator. Yeah, it's a definite real world threat. Don't
Speaker 1: get carried away by the way that. I don't think
Speaker 1: that means you should go hunt tigers. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: they don't attack people. But we're saying potentially could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and again back to your point, it's not something
Speaker 1: you see just across the board, but certain areas are
Speaker 1: going to have more the stigma about the tiger than others,
Speaker 1: in the same way that you'll go to other nations,
Speaker 1: other nationalities and find the tiger as more of a
Speaker 1: noble creature. Uh So, it just varies depending on where
Speaker 1: you are. Okay, So, but back to dragons. There's a
Speaker 1: general idea that wagons are successful and have good lives.
Speaker 1: There's good fate for a dragon. They're gonna get good grades,
Speaker 1: they're gonna find success in life, they're gonna bring honor
Speaker 1: to the family there. They're just gonna be good ones
Speaker 1: to have in your family. Are there any famous dragons
Speaker 1: you can list. Uh, you know, born in the year
Speaker 1: of the dragon, so we can see what a dragon
Speaker 1: looks like. Oh yeah, and uh and again it's easy
Speaker 1: to put together a list like this, right because out
Speaker 1: of any given year, they're gonna be some exemplary examples
Speaker 1: of of accomplishment and fame. So yeah, Bruce Lee, you
Speaker 1: got actress Maggie Chung. You've got former Chinese Piramount leader
Speaker 1: Dom Shaoping. You gotta Liam Neeson, John Lennon, Salvador Dolly,
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud, Plee, Giermo del Toro, Stephen Colbert, Sarah Palin
Speaker 1: Bennetet Cumberbatch, Sasha Gray, Connor McGregor, Vladimir Putin, the Macho
Speaker 1: Man Randy Savage, Brandy Savage, Mr T. Paul Rubens, Chuck Norris,
Speaker 1: Frank Zappa, Waynes Eyre, John Gotti, Fred Savage, Saga Era,
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick, and Philip k. Dick, Richard Pryor, and Rashida Jones,
Speaker 1: just to name a few. The only one I needed
Speaker 1: to hear was Macho Man Randy Savage. Now I understand
Speaker 1: the dragon fate leads to a slim jim ad deal.
Speaker 1: Now you've probably noticed we did have some some some
Speaker 1: Chinese names on there, but most of those were Western examples, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and part of that is that we're more
Speaker 1: versed in Western pop culture here than we are in
Speaker 1: Chinese culture. But the other thing is when you start
Speaker 1: trying to pick out examples of Chinese dragons, yes, you'll
Speaker 1: find some some good examples. But I actually was looking around.
Speaker 1: I've poken around on the the top ten entries on
Speaker 1: the Forbes China Celebrity one hundred uh, and I was
Speaker 1: looking at everything between two thousand and four and two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. Again, the top ten uh famous you know,
Speaker 1: important people, um, A lot of them in entertainment, but
Speaker 1: some in business. And the only top tenor that I
Speaker 1: found between two thousand and four and two thousand and
Speaker 1: fifteen that was a dragon was Chinese director Chin Kegi,
Speaker 1: who directed the claim film Farewell My Concubine. Huh. Now
Speaker 1: this basically all means nothing, but but I think it
Speaker 1: is important to look at, you know, as we try
Speaker 1: to figure out does does being born in the dragon?
Speaker 1: Does being a dragon actually have any tangible benefit on
Speaker 1: your life? You know, certainly not do to any kind
Speaker 1: of magical astrological reason, but due to just the importance
Speaker 1: that is projected on you. Well, obviously some parents seem
Speaker 1: to think so, because it turns out to be a
Speaker 1: fact that the Dragon year has been a boom year
Speaker 1: for baby births in many Chinese cultures. Right yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is where we really get into, you know, analyzing
Speaker 1: the tangible power of the thing. To what extent does
Speaker 1: does the desire to have a dragon as your offspring,
Speaker 1: to birth a dragon? To to what extent does that
Speaker 1: actually influence the birth rate of a given population? That is,
Speaker 1: you know, under the power of the superstitious thinking. Now
Speaker 1: you linked me to a really interesting piece on this
Speaker 1: by a writer named Rosie Seema, Right yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a priceonomics piece and uh two Goman fifteen piece, and
Speaker 1: she does a really good job just rolling through some
Speaker 1: of the statistic statistics here. It was called how the
Speaker 1: Chinese Zodiac effects National birth Rates? Yes, and another paper
Speaker 1: that found particularly helpful was paper called creating New Traditions
Speaker 1: in Modern Chinese Populations Aiming for Birth in the Year
Speaker 1: of the Dragon by Daniel Iam Goodkind and that was
Speaker 1: published in Population and Developmental Review. Okay, so what's the deal,
Speaker 1: what what are the what are the stats on birthrates
Speaker 1: and dragon years tell us basically, and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna break this down a bit, but basically, you do
Speaker 1: see spikes in particular areas that line up with the
Speaker 1: year of the dragon, right, So this is supposed to
Speaker 1: I think what we were mainly looking at was measuring
Speaker 1: fertility rates among ethnic Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, uh
Speaker 1: Singapore and other places, right yeah, uh, Peninsular Malaysia and
Speaker 1: in other parts of Asia. And that we also looked
Speaker 1: at data for mainland China, for the People's Republic of
Speaker 1: China as well. Okay, so let's look at one. Let's
Speaker 1: look at one non dragon year to dragon year transition
Speaker 1: and what what does it look like? Okay? Well, one
Speaker 1: of the big ones here, one of the most impressive
Speaker 1: areas in the stats. In seventy six and eighty eight,
Speaker 1: fertility rates among Chinese and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Peninsular
Speaker 1: Malaysia and other parts of Asia surge. And in eight
Speaker 1: particularly the rabbit to dragon increase in Singapore and Peninsular
Speaker 1: Malaysia was a whopping twenty four to twenty six percent.
Speaker 1: So it went up by twenty four correct, that's unbelievable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to put this in perspective, the only other times we
Speaker 1: see surges of this magnitude in the birth rate, it
Speaker 1: involves something really major happening. For instance, nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: the prohibition of abortion in Romania caused a substantial spike
Speaker 1: like this. I guess I could imagine maybe at the
Speaker 1: conclusion of a civil war, some of their huge human
Speaker 1: disaster that was preventing births. Yes, I mean a particular
Speaker 1: example of that also comes from China in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: as everybody's recovering from the famine of the Great Leap Forward.
Speaker 1: So some other examples. In two thousand, Hong Kong saw
Speaker 1: more than a five percent rise in the number of
Speaker 1: births according to official data. That just to be clear,
Speaker 1: that's another dragon year. And when questioned about this in
Speaker 1: various polls, um the parents, there are parents who are saying, yes,
Speaker 1: I we were trying to aim for that dragon here.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve, during
Speaker 1: a BBC poll, prospective parents in Hong Kong, Taiwan and
Speaker 1: Singapore all admitted to consciously timing their pregnancy for a
Speaker 1: Dragon year. Uh. In that same year, By the way,
Speaker 1: China was anticipating a five percent birth rate increase. That's
Speaker 1: mainland know itself. They didn't quite hit that as well,
Speaker 1: discussed in a bit, but there was a there was
Speaker 1: a boost. Now, I expect this would be interesting to
Speaker 1: see in contrast to what I bet you'd find in
Speaker 1: especially some of these areas, which would be a generally
Speaker 1: downward trending birth rate, right yeah, I mean, certainly matching
Speaker 1: up with some of these signs that are viewed as
Speaker 1: less desirable, such as the tiger As we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten a Taiwan's fertility rate was already
Speaker 1: trending downward, but then you're the tiger hits and the
Speaker 1: drop made it plumb at two point eight nine five,
Speaker 1: one of the lowest in the world. Uh yeah, and
Speaker 1: then the dread Then two thousand twelve Dragon year two
Speaker 1: years later, it brought the fertility right back up to
Speaker 1: one point to seven, higher than it had been in
Speaker 1: almost a decade. That's interesting because the tiger and Dragon
Speaker 1: years come pretty close together, right yeah. Yeah, it's tiger,
Speaker 1: rabbit and then dragons. So you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're skipping Tiger year, you could aim for rabbit or
Speaker 1: I guess you can just hold on and then try
Speaker 1: and calibrate your reproductive schedule, so you hit dragon instead
Speaker 1: of rabbit, man to be that rabbit caught between the
Speaker 1: tiger and the dragon. It's worth noting that this population,
Speaker 1: these population trends have an impact on a number of factors,
Speaker 1: from just an individual dragons school experience at college aspirations,
Speaker 1: to the effects on institutions and services. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: a hospital or school rolling with the lull and boom
Speaker 1: of tiger and dragon years. Oh yeah. Or imagine if
Speaker 1: there's a huge surge in in the number of children
Speaker 1: during a dragon year, imagine the year all of those
Speaker 1: children start leaving school and entering the workforce, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a suddenly way more supply of of
Speaker 1: adult workers than there was than the market was prepared
Speaker 1: to absorb. Right now, at this point, you're probably saying,
Speaker 1: I think, and you said, well, hey, Robert and Joe, uh,
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac has been along been around for thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years, so surely the dragon surge has been
Speaker 1: in effect for thousands and thousands of years. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any evidence of that is there no the
Speaker 1: evidence uh, seems to suggest that the opposite, that the
Speaker 1: dragon effect on birth rates has only been in effect
Speaker 1: since the nineteen seventies. Now why would that be surely? Now,
Speaker 1: what I would not suspect is that more people started
Speaker 1: believing in astrology in the nineteen seventies, right and and
Speaker 1: certainly it would it seems like it was. It's the opposite.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are certainly still gonna be individuals who
Speaker 1: heavily believe in it, and it still has just a
Speaker 1: lot of cultural power over people and just symbolic power.
Speaker 1: But you know, as modernization takes hold, and especially in
Speaker 1: communist China, there is for a while a tendency to
Speaker 1: move away from old beliefs and uh and and certainly superstition. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though we will definitely talk in a little bit about
Speaker 1: exactly to what extent true belief in in the power
Speaker 1: of the zodiac really figures into this, Like how deeply
Speaker 1: do you have to believe in it to time for
Speaker 1: a dragon birth? Right now? You know, one of the
Speaker 1: big factors, obviously is that you see birth control becoming
Speaker 1: more of a of an option right in becomes widely
Speaker 1: available in the affected areas, so family planning becomes more
Speaker 1: of a reality, planning around finances and ambitions, but also
Speaker 1: the ability to plan around the astrological calendar. Oh, that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So that is an argument that is generally
Speaker 1: made um for you know, for why we see this
Speaker 1: modern boom. Yeah. And there's a parallel that goes along
Speaker 1: with this. In this often cited paper on this subject
Speaker 1: called the Influence of the Chinese Zodiac on Fertility in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong s A r. By Paul SF, Joseph Lee,
Speaker 1: and Y. B. Chung. Right, Yeah, they point out that
Speaker 1: prior to the nineteen seventies, you know, there was just
Speaker 1: no there was no family planning at all. Really, you
Speaker 1: just had kids for as long as you could. You
Speaker 1: just grew the family as large as you could, and
Speaker 1: that was that was life. You might you'll have a
Speaker 1: dragon in the family, maybe you'll have a tiger, you'll
Speaker 1: have a horse. But that's just how things rolled out.
Speaker 1: But then, of course, the the age of contraception, because
Speaker 1: to change that, uh, certainly, Um, you reach the point
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen seven days where the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China rolls out the one child policy, and uh,
Speaker 1: this it's believed might have had an effect on zodiological
Speaker 1: birth timing as well. Now that brings us to another
Speaker 1: interesting question, which is the mainland China itself, People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China. We've been talking about places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be some disagreement, or at least
Speaker 1: some ambiguity in the numbers about to what extent this
Speaker 1: phenomenon has presented itself in in China, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you you just don't see those same spikes in in
Speaker 1: the data for mainland China, at least until two thousand,
Speaker 1: if not two thousand twelve. Now, I have to admit
Speaker 1: that I was a little I was a little confused
Speaker 1: by the numbers here because I was seeing some conflicting
Speaker 1: reports about whether this, uh, this dragon birth surge does
Speaker 1: show up in China or not for the past couple
Speaker 1: of cycles. Yeah, because on one hand, I saw staff
Speaker 1: that said China's crude birth rate was six point eight
Speaker 1: percent higher in two thousand, But then some other data,
Speaker 1: particularly some data in that Prisonomics paper, seemed to show
Speaker 1: it as being rather flat for two thousand. But when
Speaker 1: you when you do look at the statistics from two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven two thousand twelve to thirteen. According to the website,
Speaker 1: statistic of the number of Chinese births went from sixteen
Speaker 1: point oh four million in two thousand eleven to sixteen
Speaker 1: point thirty five million in two thousand and twelve. So
Speaker 1: there was a one point nine percent bump uh in
Speaker 1: the birth rate then, uh. But then in the years
Speaker 1: to follow you see sixteen point four million births in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, sixteen point eighty seven million in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen. So the growth continues regardless of the sign.
Speaker 1: Now there are different you know, the different ways. So
Speaker 1: to look at that, uh, I've seen it argue that
Speaker 1: that essentially the population is just so vast in mainland
Speaker 1: China that any any boost that's taking place in various regions,
Speaker 1: it's just going to be lost in the just just
Speaker 1: in the weight of the of the population data. Right.
Speaker 1: So there might be some parts of the culture where
Speaker 1: the dragon births do prevail, but it's just become such
Speaker 1: a small blip on the radar of Chinese population dynamics
Speaker 1: that it doesn't really show up as a very strong trend. Yes,
Speaker 1: to see the strong trend, you have to look to Taiwan, Singapore,
Speaker 1: those other examples. Okay, now this brings us back to
Speaker 1: the question of why right, Why is why is it
Speaker 1: a modern setting? Why is this this ancient superstitious manner
Speaker 1: of thinking. Why is this suddenly exerting more control in
Speaker 1: some areas of Chinese culture? Well, a few things to
Speaker 1: keep in mind here. First of all, this first point
Speaker 1: comes to us from paper creating new traditions in modern
Speaker 1: Chinese populations aiming for birth in the year of the
Speaker 1: Drag and this is that good article. Uh points out
Speaker 1: that Chinese astrology traditionally places more emphasis on the day
Speaker 1: and hour of the birth rather than the year. So
Speaker 1: because if you break down the traditional Chinese day, it's
Speaker 1: composed of twelve hours, one for each animal that we've
Speaker 1: already mentioned. Um So, therefore the roots here seem to
Speaker 1: be perhaps less the two thousand plus yer tradition of
Speaker 1: Chinese astrology, and rather it's more a matter of a
Speaker 1: cloud of loose modern folk beliefs. That's interesting. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's not so much that people are are deeply superstitious
Speaker 1: or deeply involved in you know, ancient Chinese magical beliefs,
Speaker 1: but there's more just kind of like it's the place
Speaker 1: Matt Zodiac. It's the most easily accessible and broadly available
Speaker 1: impressions of the of the Chinese zodiac that filter through
Speaker 1: into having large effects on culture. Yeah. Yeah, it's except
Speaker 1: it's not only on your menu. It's in your house,
Speaker 1: it's in the park, it's part of it's just the
Speaker 1: shadow of it is just unavoidable. So as you find
Speaker 1: yourself in a modern setting where you're you get to
Speaker 1: be choosier about everything regarding your family. You get to
Speaker 1: be choosier about how many children you have, regardless if
Speaker 1: you live under the one child policy or not. You
Speaker 1: have all these choices. You can make choices based on,
Speaker 1: you know, what the kid's gonna wear, when the kid's
Speaker 1: gonna be born, what kind of school schooling is going
Speaker 1: to be involved there, And so the superstition ends up
Speaker 1: weighing into that choice. Right. Another factor to keep in
Speaker 1: mind here, and this is brought up by by Goodkin
Speaker 1: in his article, is that you know, we we we
Speaker 1: make arguments about modern contraception in their role. That was
Speaker 1: one explanation offer for why this didn't show up until
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yeah, because suddenly people can choose when they're
Speaker 1: gonna have kids, but is he argues, ancient texts indicated
Speaker 1: there there were various methods on the table to adjust
Speaker 1: sexual behavior and aim for the dragon birth. If that's
Speaker 1: what a couple wanted, You mean you had in fantaside,
Speaker 1: you had, you know, a board of agency you could
Speaker 1: get from a Chinese apothecary. But a particular note for
Speaker 1: good can was Dallas practices of semen retention. And this Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go down to a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: here too much, but basically this gets into u yin
Speaker 1: and yang and male and feminine energy, and this Dallas
Speaker 1: idea that if you could control your ejaculation and ejaculate
Speaker 1: less semen during intercourse, then you could better retain your
Speaker 1: yang energy and possibly even absorb a little bit of
Speaker 1: your partners a yen energy. You wrote about this in
Speaker 1: UH You got a post about the fox spirit, didn't you. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it plays into that a little bit because the fox
Speaker 1: spirit is a feminine creature that can drain you of
Speaker 1: your vital yang essence. Basically, the main idea here is
Speaker 1: that there were were various pseudo uh alchemical sexual practices
Speaker 1: to control ejaculation and granted the emphasis here wasn't on contraception.
Speaker 1: It was more on in this magical belief system of
Speaker 1: Vien and yang Uh. But the change the Chinese knew
Speaker 1: how reproduction worked, they knew how where babies came from.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, like, even a long time ago before
Speaker 1: modern birth control, if they were really concerned about timing
Speaker 1: for dragon births, they could have done it. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: there was a real tangible cultural emphasis put on aiming
Speaker 1: for that dragon birth, they could have done it if
Speaker 1: they wanted to. Now, you can also argues that the
Speaker 1: snake year, which comes immediately after the dragon, may also
Speaker 1: have a role here, because that could be viewed by
Speaker 1: some as a bad birth year, thus affecting the the
Speaker 1: phenomenon right, making people want to get in there early,
Speaker 1: kind of double it up right, right, like if you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a kid, it's beneficial to have a dragon,
Speaker 1: and then right after that as a snake, which some
Speaker 1: people might not want. Better, better to hit the dragon
Speaker 1: before the snake or hit horse afterwards. Unless here in
Speaker 1: South Korea, which also uses a form of the zodiac um,
Speaker 1: where horse mails are apparently favorite and horse females are not,
Speaker 1: and the gender ratio of births in horse years excuse mail, huh?
Speaker 1: And the reason here is, on one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: abortion may play a role the the aborting of female offspring,
Speaker 1: but also misreporting a birth date in order to hit
Speaker 1: a more desirable zodiac year. So if you're on the fence,
Speaker 1: so your kids on the fence of possibly being a horse,
Speaker 1: and you don't want her to have that kind of association,
Speaker 1: then you could just say, oh, she's not a horse.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, she's a snake. Okay, So now I think
Speaker 1: it's time to turn our attention to the fate of
Speaker 1: dragon children. It is a dragon child really more likely
Speaker 1: to succeed in the world than children born under other signs? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is the is the the magical thinking involved here? Is
Speaker 1: that giving them? Uh? Is that projecting some sort of
Speaker 1: importance on them? Is it giving them a boost? Is
Speaker 1: it putting too much pressure on them? Um? Yeah? Are
Speaker 1: they gonna have opportunities that their individuals are not going
Speaker 1: to have just because of their birth here? Yeah? Well
Speaker 1: there was a two thousand two Forbes article titled is
Speaker 1: Success in the Stars? By Virginia Citronto, and that compared
Speaker 1: birth here on Forbes' list of the four hundred wealthiest
Speaker 1: Americans at the time. That's interesting. Remember the Americans and
Speaker 1: what did they find, well, son of a Gun. Even
Speaker 1: in this list of Americans, the dragons came out on
Speaker 1: top forty three of the Forbes four hundred or ten
Speaker 1: point seven five percent were born in dragon years, which
Speaker 1: was more than any other Chinese zodiac sign, which is weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, so maybe there is something to this superstition.
Speaker 1: But then again, this is this is Americans. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of these people probably are not even aware
Speaker 1: of what Chinese zodiac sign they are, or if anything,
Speaker 1: they probably have just that Chinese menu association that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier exactly. But then there was a there was
Speaker 1: a paper in Economic Inquiry called do Dragons Have Better Faith?
Speaker 1: This came out in two thousand five by Cafu Wong
Speaker 1: and Linda Young and Wong and Young investigate weather dragons
Speaker 1: actually have better outcomes in life by looking at data
Speaker 1: sets from the nineteen one in nineteen ninety six Hong
Speaker 1: Kong census, and the authors explained that the Hong Kong
Speaker 1: Census data was used because one most of the community
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong is Chinese to the lunar calendar, is
Speaker 1: used extensively. And three, this census model provides data on
Speaker 1: other useful variables like level of education and so Wong
Speaker 1: and Young founded in the nineteen nine one census, Dragons
Speaker 1: actually did have a slightly higher than average mean earnings variable.
Speaker 1: So they're comparing year of birth to how much money
Speaker 1: you make. It was a plus four point eight five
Speaker 1: percent on earnings. But in nineteen ninety six dragons had
Speaker 1: a slightly lower than average mean earning report, with a
Speaker 1: negative zero point twenty two percent. However, they said that
Speaker 1: when mitigating variables like schooling are taken to account, they
Speaker 1: conclude that the that quote, statistically, the coefficients are unstable
Speaker 1: across sensus years and insignificantly different from zero in most cases.
Speaker 1: So ultimately they don't find any strong evidence for the
Speaker 1: superstition that dragons do better. So an effect on birthrates
Speaker 1: in some places, yes, an effect on the actual success
Speaker 1: level of individuals born in that year, no evidence at all.
Speaker 1: Well there, you know, as we said, in one of
Speaker 1: the years, there was a slight advantage. In another year
Speaker 1: there there wasn't. And they said, overall, when you compare
Speaker 1: it to years of schooling and stuff like that, a
Speaker 1: strong trend does not emerge. But there could be other
Speaker 1: reasons that that a dragon birth could seem to have
Speaker 1: an effect that you could look at the people around
Speaker 1: you in society or look at yourself and say, hey, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: those dragons are really great. I want to have a
Speaker 1: dragon child too. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be
Speaker 1: economically measurable. It could be entirely based on, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of human capital or just just social perception.
Speaker 1: And here I want to bring in something that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in a previous episode, which is the role
Speaker 1: of the forror effect also known as the Barnum effect.
Speaker 1: Will use those interchangeably for and Barnum in astrology. So
Speaker 1: if you if you missed our episode Something for Everybody,
Speaker 1: the Horror Effect from July, let's do a brief refresher
Speaker 1: on it. What what was the horror effect? All right,
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here is the Tennessee of
Speaker 1: people to accept vague general personality of descriptions is highly
Speaker 1: accurate and applying to them specifically. Yeah, this is why
Speaker 1: these personality tests are so popular. Yeah, Like, like any
Speaker 1: of those descriptions we made earlier, we say, oh, here
Speaker 1: the pros and the cons of year of the rat.
Speaker 1: And if you're you're the rat, you instantly cling under
Speaker 1: the things that seem to fit, that you know are true,
Speaker 1: the things you like would like to be true. And
Speaker 1: if and if something doesn't quite stick, you just let
Speaker 1: it fall away. Yeah, and it helps them or general
Speaker 1: the description is, so, there are a few things we
Speaker 1: found in that episode, Uh, what were especially conducive to
Speaker 1: people judging personality descriptions, especially vague general ones as applying
Speaker 1: specifically to them. One is that if it's supposedly tailored
Speaker 1: to them by a competent authority, and in some cases
Speaker 1: a competent authority may include something like tradition. You know,
Speaker 1: zodiacal tradition could be considered a competent authority, or especially
Speaker 1: if it's flattering or favorable to the dupe in question,
Speaker 1: you or me. Uh, you're more likely to accept descriptions
Speaker 1: of yourself that sound kind of good. Now. There was
Speaker 1: a study on the Barnum effect or the horror effect
Speaker 1: and popular horoscopes in the Journal of Psychology in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three by Katherine S. Fichton and Betty Sunterton. This
Speaker 1: is an older paper, but I think it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: and it applies to what we're talking about here. It's
Speaker 1: also going to be dealing with Western astrology, not Chinese astrology,
Speaker 1: but I think the same principles can apply in interesting ways.
Speaker 1: So this was carried out in nineteen eight three, and
Speaker 1: what they addressed was the perceived accuracy of astrological personality descriptions.
Speaker 1: So an interesting starting question is this some sometimes, even nonbelievers,
Speaker 1: people who are not into astrology, they don't give it
Speaker 1: any credence, will read an astrology based description of their
Speaker 1: signs supposed personality traits and report finding this description highly accurate.
Speaker 1: So you are a Scorpio and I tell you what
Speaker 1: a scorpio's personality is supposed to be like, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: but that's me. Yeah. How could How could they know
Speaker 1: so much? So they got three hundred and sixty six
Speaker 1: college students and they examined a individual differences associated with
Speaker 1: horoscope reading habits, be the reliability and validity of daily
Speaker 1: and monthly horoscope forecasts and astrologically based personality descriptions, and
Speaker 1: see the effects of knowing the zodiac sign on the
Speaker 1: perception of usefulness of horoscope forecasts and on the accuracy
Speaker 1: of astrologically based personality descriptions. So we're mainly interested in
Speaker 1: the second half of B and then c there how
Speaker 1: accurate these personality descriptions are and whether it matters that
Speaker 1: you know zodiac signs. Uh. So they did. They broke
Speaker 1: it up like this. There were two hundred and three
Speaker 1: subjects that rated thirteen one paragraph personality descriptions on a
Speaker 1: ten point scale from not at all like me to
Speaker 1: very much like me. So it might say, you know,
Speaker 1: you're very brave, powerful, courageous, and strong, you love lobster
Speaker 1: butter and jet packs. Uh and and you would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds a lot like me, or no, that does
Speaker 1: not sound very much like me. And so twelve of
Speaker 1: these descriptions came from a couple of different purse size
Speaker 1: horoscope booklets, and the thirteen was a control paragraph that
Speaker 1: was known as a Barnum paragraph, or what it was
Speaker 1: was playing on the Barnum horror effect. It was personality
Speaker 1: description specifically designed to appear highly accurate by exploiting this
Speaker 1: horror effect. Contained vague statements that have a very high
Speaker 1: base rate of occurrence in the population. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the kind of thing that anybody would look
Speaker 1: at and say, yeah, that's me. Some of the subjects
Speaker 1: got to see the paragraphs identified with the appropriate zodiac
Speaker 1: signs so that it would say like cancer and then
Speaker 1: described the described the personality. Others just saw the paragraphs
Speaker 1: without the zodiac signs associated with them, and and no
Speaker 1: indication of the astrological significance. Uh. And one of the
Speaker 1: things before I report the results is that it's it's
Speaker 1: important to emphasize that this was studying self perceived validity,
Speaker 1: not externally verified validity. So it's what people's idea is
Speaker 1: of how well it describes them, not how well it
Speaker 1: actually matches any external behavior. Okay, and interesting to hear
Speaker 1: that on one hand we have the description and in
Speaker 1: another hand, we have a description with the symbolic power
Speaker 1: of the zodiac. Yeah, yeah, exactly. In a separate part
Speaker 1: of the paper, one that we're not really focusing on,
Speaker 1: that they found that the daily and monthly forecasts were unreliable.
Speaker 1: You know, so when it tells you, like, hey, what
Speaker 1: you know, what you're gonna need to do today as
Speaker 1: a cancer is not choked to death on a hot
Speaker 1: dog and makeing make an investment with somebody who offers
Speaker 1: you an opportunity those kinds of things. They match those
Speaker 1: two previous days, and and it turned out that these
Speaker 1: had no effect whatsoever. They were not any more reliable
Speaker 1: for the one zone zodiac sign than for the other one.
Speaker 1: They was so specific that they just didn't hold up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that these were the forecasts for events. But the personality descriptions,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, were in some cases found to
Speaker 1: have some significant reliability. And this is the weird thing,
Speaker 1: they say, quote an average of four point twelve of
Speaker 1: the twelve personality descriptions were matched correctly by the seventeen subjects.
Speaker 1: The probability of such results being due to chance is
Speaker 1: less than five per cent, so that's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: So when no identification of personality descriptions with zodiac signs
Speaker 1: was supplied the subjects, first of all, they clearly liked
Speaker 1: the barnum paragraph the best, The one they thought that
Speaker 1: most accurately described them. Was not a zodiac paragraph at all.
Speaker 1: It was just this barnum paragraph that's supposed to match anybody.
Speaker 1: But when the subjects knew the zodiac signs associated with
Speaker 1: the descriptions, they tended to think that their own signs
Speaker 1: description was more accurate than that of the eleven other signs,
Speaker 1: But there was an unexpected finding with one of the
Speaker 1: two astrology books, the Purse Book be the second one.
Speaker 1: Even when the descriptions didn't have the zodiac sign matched
Speaker 1: with them, people found their own people's You know, so
Speaker 1: I'm a cancer and I'm reading through these unlabeled personality descriptions.
Speaker 1: I was more likely in the study to pick the
Speaker 1: description lick linked with the cancer sign, even when it
Speaker 1: didn't say cancer. Wow, and that is weird. That makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, Wait a minute, is there something to astrology? Well, no,
Speaker 1: the Purse Book B was not full of real magic.
Speaker 1: Subsequent analysis of the data showed that when someone who
Speaker 1: had at some time in the past read a description
Speaker 1: of their own science personality, they tended to rate their
Speaker 1: own science descriptions is more accurate even when it wasn't
Speaker 1: identified by the sign. Thus, the culprit could simply be
Speaker 1: conscious or unconscious familiarity with what the sign is supposed
Speaker 1: to be like. So even the shadow of that of
Speaker 1: that set of that symbol of that sign. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: these people didn't have to be deep into astrology. It
Speaker 1: could be somebody like me who I don't pay attention
Speaker 1: to astrology. I don't. I don't really know anything about it.
Speaker 1: But I have read the cancer description sometime in the past,
Speaker 1: and if I answered that way on the questionnaire, it
Speaker 1: turned out I could look at unlabeled descriptions of personality
Speaker 1: at ease and pick the one for cancer as most
Speaker 1: likely applying to me. And I just want to read
Speaker 1: a quote from their conclusion. They say, two possible mechanisms
Speaker 1: underlying the effect of familiarity on acceptance of personality descriptions
Speaker 1: can be proposed. Uh. First of all, having read that
Speaker 1: as a Virgo you are an honest person, one self
Speaker 1: assessment may come to include the trait honest, so in
Speaker 1: that way that the personality description, once you've read it,
Speaker 1: actually influences how you think of yourself. Uh. Back to them,
Speaker 1: A personality description which stresses honesty may therefore be accepted
Speaker 1: as an accurate characteristic of oneself. Alternately, having some previous
Speaker 1: information about one's supposed character traits e g. I'm a Virgo,
Speaker 1: Virgos are honest may give one the opportunity to notice
Speaker 1: and subsequently recall instances of behavioral confirmation. I returned the
Speaker 1: bus ticket to the man who dropped it that was
Speaker 1: really honest of me. That's the miliarity may operate in
Speaker 1: this instance through having repeatedly noticed oneself behaving in an
Speaker 1: honest fashion. So they're The second idea there is that
Speaker 1: if you've read a description of your personality before, you
Speaker 1: have primed your brain to cherry pick from then on
Speaker 1: instances of things that match with what you've read in
Speaker 1: the past. And this I feel like this makes particular sense, uh,
Speaker 1: when thinking about the Chinese zodiac, because you're talking about
Speaker 1: how these different zodiac signs and symbols and how they
Speaker 1: end up casting the shadow in our life and you
Speaker 1: just can't avoid it just subconsciously thinking about it. I
Speaker 1: feel like the Chinese zodiac signs are even easier to
Speaker 1: just casually fall into because they have the animal at
Speaker 1: the center. They have that personality that so even you
Speaker 1: look at the pig, you have enough of familiarity with
Speaker 1: stories of pigs and reality of pigs you have some
Speaker 1: idea what that personality consists of. Yeah, totally. The animal
Speaker 1: character brings a level of personnality to the characterization that
Speaker 1: I think is just not present in many of the
Speaker 1: Western zodiac signs. Yeah, I mean especially if you're stuck
Speaker 1: with Pisces with the scales or whatnot. Right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: always wanted a Scorpion. I'm some scales. Wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: great if it were more directly tailored to exactly what
Speaker 1: the things were? So it's like, oh, I'm a Pisces.
Speaker 1: When somebody puts something on one half of me, I
Speaker 1: tip over to that side. I'm a cancer and I
Speaker 1: can't help pinching people when I'm in public, right exactly,
Speaker 1: I'm a Scorpio, and some when somebody cuts my tail off,
Speaker 1: I don't immediately die. I just can't poop until I die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that. That would be that would of course
Speaker 1: be way too specific in generality. That's where the power
Speaker 1: is when it comes to a zodiac. You know. Another
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting about how this applies to society at
Speaker 1: large is the way at which I wonder if something
Speaker 1: like this could become a self fulfilling prophecy across generations,
Speaker 1: because think about it like this, This is just sculation.
Speaker 1: This is not based on a finding um. But we
Speaker 1: do know that the Barnum effect or the horror effect,
Speaker 1: through that people tend to grant more credence to the
Speaker 1: accuracy of vague personality descriptions when they're worded in a
Speaker 1: favorable or flattering way. So for this reason, I think
Speaker 1: it might be sensible to guess that dragons are more
Speaker 1: likely than other people to believe in the virtues of dragons.
Speaker 1: When that makes sense, yeah, because the sign like if
Speaker 1: you're a pig, some people can have some issues with that.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's worth remembering that there are Chinese Muslims
Speaker 1: and um I understand for for Chinese muslim this can
Speaker 1: be kind of rather problematic and end up not referring
Speaker 1: to the year of the Pig as the year of
Speaker 1: the pig directly because of the pigs status in Islamic culture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so totally. I I can see how ones uh, like
Speaker 1: the positive or negative qualities associated with the thing can
Speaker 1: affect the extent to which you believe in it. So
Speaker 1: if you're a dragon, you might be more likely to
Speaker 1: believe in the virtues of dragons. And if selective timing
Speaker 1: and reproduction means that there are more dragons than any
Speaker 1: other animal of the zodiac over time, especially in I
Speaker 1: don't mean across all Chinese, but in certain areas where
Speaker 1: this is a pronounced trend. This could also mean that
Speaker 1: there are more adults of reproductive age every generation that
Speaker 1: believe in the superiority of dragons because they themselves are
Speaker 1: dragons and thus also aimed to produce dragons. So could
Speaker 1: this lead to something like a runaway dragon effect. I'm
Speaker 1: just imagining like a sci fi story where there's a
Speaker 1: culture where something like this has happened over many generations
Speaker 1: and it gets to the point where they only breed
Speaker 1: a large crop of new children once every twelve years
Speaker 1: because of the terrible taboo on children born as non dragons.
Speaker 1: I like that sci fi vision there, Joe. Somehow, I
Speaker 1: suspect that's probably not going to happen in the real world,
Speaker 1: because there are just enough other factors controlling when people
Speaker 1: give birth, and the fact that, as we've said, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be that people are are strongly motivated
Speaker 1: by a powerful belief in the Chinese zodiac and and
Speaker 1: like that this is the main thing deciding when when
Speaker 1: they have a child. But that maybe if it's convenient,
Speaker 1: it might kind of push you a little bit in
Speaker 1: that direction, even just some yeah, some vague loose cultural knowledge,
Speaker 1: even just if you don't believe in the magic of it,
Speaker 1: but have some positive associations about dragons. It might make
Speaker 1: you want to do it. Yeah, the sweet spot here
Speaker 1: seems to be um not rigid belief in it, and
Speaker 1: also not the complete rejection of it for that place
Speaker 1: in the middle where it's not really a part of
Speaker 1: your daily conscious life, but you cannot escape its cultural
Speaker 1: hold on you. Oh. I think that's the way most
Speaker 1: of us interact with our cultural superstitions, right. I know
Speaker 1: I'm that way that I I don't if you pin
Speaker 1: me down, I don't believe in any of these superstitions.
Speaker 1: I don't actually believe it's bad luck to cross a
Speaker 1: black cat's path. I don't actually believe one shouldn't walk
Speaker 1: under a ladder, But I know that when there are
Speaker 1: no stakes involved, uh, that it might sort of influence
Speaker 1: the path I take when I'm walking. Yeah, exactly if
Speaker 1: you if it does, all things being equal, which path
Speaker 1: are you're gonna take? The one that looks little spooky?
Speaker 1: Are the one that that doesn't Even though I don't
Speaker 1: believe in it, it's just it's just kind of there.
Speaker 1: It's a cultural association. And and when I'm not otherwise
Speaker 1: motivated by any other strong factor it kind of guides me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the remarkable thing about this this
Speaker 1: topic that really helps to illuminate the power of myth,
Speaker 1: the power of symbolism, and the power of sort of
Speaker 1: um background folklore over our lives. Hey, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of our favorite themes here. Now, obviously we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from all of you, Um, what's here zodiac sign?
Speaker 1: Do you feel it's accurate? Do you feel like it's
Speaker 1: made a marked impact on your life in any way whatsoever?
Speaker 1: Uh huh. And we know that we have listeners who
Speaker 1: grew up in Chinese households as well. If so, I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to share your experience with us on
Speaker 1: these matters, because obviously the Chinese zodiac is gonna cast
Speaker 1: more of a shadow in your life than it did
Speaker 1: on our. So one of the things I would love
Speaker 1: to hear is if you're a person who knows more
Speaker 1: about the Chinese zodiac, who understands some of the complexities
Speaker 1: that are no doubt lost on us. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we we only have the that that place Matt kind
Speaker 1: of understanding. I think, yeah, place Matt, And then you know,
Speaker 1: so some book learning on top of that, but but
Speaker 1: that's about it. Yeah, if you if you are somebody
Speaker 1: who knows a lot more about the complexities of the
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac and wants to wants to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us about that, we we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you as well, exactly. And hey, in the meantime, head
Speaker 1: on over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mothership. That is where you will find all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes, including this one, and we'll make sure
Speaker 1: that the landing page has some links out to related
Speaker 1: material on the site as well as some of the
Speaker 1: resources we used in researching it. Also their videos. There
Speaker 1: there are block post if you'll also find links up
Speaker 1: to our very social media accounts that just Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler.
Speaker 1: We are blow the Mind on all of those and
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us about
Speaker 1: any of those things we brought up just a little
Speaker 1: while ago, you can email us at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works, Doctor Well more on this and
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Speaker 1: com