IN COMMENTING ON THE SENSE OF HUMOR REVEALED in Chinese art the meaning of the word art is less elusive than that of humor. One term is more concrete, the other more abstract. To begin with, in the following pages certain arts will be considered and others dismissed. There will be little or no reference to music or architecture, though music is unquestionably capable of a singularly delightful expression of humor and Chinese architecture in particular is rich in caprice and fantasy. Attention will be virtually confined to the representational arts of painting and figure sculpture. If the representation of dragons is included, this, too, may be regarded as legitimate matter, since there is unquestionably a sense in which the ancient Chinese believed in the existence of dragons, though they might not dogmatize as to just what a dragon’s physiognomy need be.

Humor, to repeat, is the more elusive term. Though no rigid definition will be insisted on, a reasonable understanding of the word as used here is obviously required, especially since it is popularly used with so many different connotations. For example, the present meaning differs radically from that employed by George Kao in his anthology, Chinese Wit and Humor. This editor offers no distinctions between wit and humor. Perhaps the many brief annecdotes that he selects, as a rule having a didactic flavor, he considers wit. Few persons will care to quarrel with this use of the term. But the anthology contains long selections that would naturally be described as satire or invective and others that seem a species of realism or of a merely pleasant fantasy. Possibly no more than a tenth of the book has the quality here understood as humor.

Of course no one should be so humorless as to propose a rigid definition of humor. A reasonably cogent description is all that is required. Humor, then, is the quality of thought that imagines a pleasing incongruity. It is better defined by physical manifestations than in strictly intellectual terms. A smile or a laugh provides a better sign than any pedantic definition. Yet here, particularly where traditional Chinese culture is considered, it may be remarked that some degree of sophistication is presumed. Humor may indeed at times be childlike but never childish. Children smile or laugh when something pleases them. Their laughter may have little to do with what the mature person regards as understanding or intelligence. Again, the cruder forms of hilarity, the exuberant expressions of coarse or excessively simple-minded people, do not constitute humor in the present sense. The word has had an eventful history. Humor is today generally understood as more imaginative than eccentric. By the Elizabethans, on the contrary, the word was often employed to mean mere eccentricity or a purposeless overflow of misdirected spirit, an irrationality akin to intoxication. This is not intended now, though strong liquor was consumed and praised by many of the illustrious humorists considered in these pages. Humor as outlined here ranges from the macabre to the highly refined, from burly outspokenness with freedom from inhibition to subtle and delicate understatement, from extravagance to intimation. It may be tart but never quite acidulous. It flourishes in the arts but extends beyond them, a mood readily superimposed upon the aesthetic experience. It presumes a moment of happiness and a sense of well-being. A clown may have a sorry fall but the audience takes pleasure in it. As will in due time be observed, the Chinese, like other people, occasionally exhibit a distinctly cruel humor. But this is not as a rule present in the items about to be considered. The comic spirit as here understood does not descend to mere farce any more than it rises to righteous indignation or nurses hate in any form. Its incongruities are not conceived in strictly moral terms. It floats serenely above the storm clouds of downright propaganda. It takes positive pleasure in contemplating life’s unreasonableness. Perhaps at another time and place faults detected by the humorist may be severely rebuked and amended but humor as here conceived observes fallibility and reacts with amusement.

So much for the more general point of view. More narrowly, the inquiry is into the particular flavor of traditional Chinese humor. Presumably this differs in some respects from that of other lands and times, presumably even from whatever sense of humor exists even in China today under Communism. Here some questions of a virtually metaphysical nature arise. There is no safe presumption that any man today recaptures the total sensibility of any Chinese artist or writer of early times. Above all, in so elusive a pursuit as that now proposed our thought, no matter how scrupulously pursued, is a compromise between the ancients and ourselves. The scholar is not the dilettante. The latter reports only his own spontaneous reactions to works created in a distant past; the former, if true to his profession, will on the one hand admit that he must see all things to some degree through his own eyes but on the other hand will make every effort possible to arrive at the point of view of the creators from whose hands the classical works have sprung. There is no doubt that much that has seemed comic to one age may seem tragic to another and that the converse of this holds equally true. A statue of a green-faced god of the underworld, which may appear thoroughly comic to an intelligent person today, nevertheless suggested only terror or high dignity to the Chinese artist who created it. Time on the whole relaxes tensions. Animal statuary that seems primitive, awkward, naive, comic to a modern may have been viewed in a thoroughly serious light when made. Again, many Chinese of earlier times unquestionably laughed at spectacles that would be revolting and even horrifying to most moderns. Conventions give symbolic meanings that change radically and are not readily construed from a psychological point of view. How does the modern viewer distinguish, for example, between a benign and a malign dragon? What are the meanings of certain gestures in a dance? Will not one viewer find a figure truly noble which another finds absurdly pompous? Who can thread his way without occasionally stumbling in these twilights of the spirit? Everyone is aware that especially when joking or humor is concerned even the most sensitive persons may in social life find themselves wholly mistaken and sadly embarrassed. A remark that is facetiously intended may be taken as an offense or an observation that is meant seriously construed as humorous. Some works present so great a complexity that a virtual allegory is created, one level to be taken as serious, another as comic. One of the greatest Chinese novels, Monkey, at least approaches this condition.

These are treacherous paths, leading through forests quite as dangerous for the interpreter as they are delightful. The attempt is made here to see through the eyes of the ancients. Yet choices are made. Attention is given more often to works that have retained undoubted forcefulness as humor than those where the smile has faded. The conclusion is that Chinese humor has lasted surprisingly well, possibly at times even seasoned to richer meanings with the years.

Some further generalizations have importance where humor in the fine arts is seen beside that contained in words. Small justification exists for the view that strictly the same attitudes are expressed in any two media of expression. Within the realm of literature itself, for example, traditional Chinese poetry is singularly chaste when placed beside the often erotic quality of Chinese story-telling. One might almost presume the two genres to proceed from two distinct cultures. Nevertheless by and large, a general accord in any culture may be presumed between two arts when viewed with sufficient breadth. This statement holds especially valid for China when attention is restricted to the expression of the upper class as distinguished from that of the humble. Relatively little folk art survives from earlier centuries. Only a comparatively small and favored minority, of course, were literate. Painting as preserved to us remained largely in the hands of gentlemen or a sophisticated class of professionals. Sculpture, though less of an aristocratic art, was still primarily for the privileged. Even lyric poetry, as represented above all by The Book of Songs, though no doubt heard more often than read, became, especially as time advanced, the prized possession of the scholar class. Here what was born as folk poetry became the treasured possession of the literati. There seems to have been a well-marked distinction between folk-music and art-music. Both forms of music have now largely disappeared through the attrition of time. The poems, narratives, paintings, and the sculpture at least to a far more substantial degree remain with us. Hence it is to them that the cultural historian and the philosopher turn with some confidence of reward. It is here assumed that at least in broad and general terms the sentiments and ideas expressed in the fine arts accord with those voiced in literature.

Whether these are more clearly expressed to us in one or in another medium is a question presumed unanswerable, though some profit may be gained from brief reflections and comparisons in this general field. The fine arts enjoy an advantage that may or may not be misleading. Although colors fade and silk disintegrates, stone chips and wood decays, work in the fine arts enjoys a peculiar power of survival. Words notoriously shift their meanings as generations pass. Most intellectuals throughout the world who are at all cognizant of ancient China unfortunately know its literature chiefly or wholly through translation. This is inevitably to see through a glass darkly. Our sensuous apprehensions would seem to encourage us to consider the fine arts as providing the safest testimony.

But what, more seriously, are the facts of the case? A picture may in reality be quite as elusive as a poem. Art critics swarm about the flowers of art like bees, buzz as loudly as those of literature, and differ quite as widely from one another. They presume that they correct misapprehensions and reveal realities. Let us trust that they do so. Nevertheless, these conditions discourage the naive assumption that the picture is in some sense clearer in communication than the poem. If one could assume a thorough knowledge of medieval or classical Chinese among interested Westerners in the areas mentioned thus far one might possibly presume an equal accessibility to literature and to the arts. Inasmuch as the contrary holds true, it may be well to begin an inquiry into classical Chinese humor with reference to the arts. Hence as a prolegomenon to a study of humor in writers of poetry, drama and fiction some examination of the arts should provide a useful and strategic introduction.

It must be initially recognized that only portions of these vast fields are relevant. The world over, it has been conceded that life is in general serious, even if not earnest. Even in Asia the laughing philosophers constitute a minority. Naturally, only a minor proportion of Chinese art and literature reveals a sense of comedy. Nevertheless, it may reasonably be held that no part of China’s legacy to civilization is more unusual or precious than its singular gift of humor. As all persons acquainted with Chinese statuary are well aware, the Chinese, unlike most peoples, actually created for themselves a god of humor and of laughter. Many of the very finest poems in The Book of Songs as well as in the works of Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chü-i are in the present sense of the word humorous. It is generally acknowledged that the finest Chinese play is The West Chamber, peculiarly rich in the most sophisticated form of humor. The greater number of the plays by the chief Yüan dramatist, Kuan Han-ch’ing, are certainly comedies. Few, if any, works of Chinese fiction surpass the novel which Arthur Waley has brilliantly translated under the title Monkey. Most Chinese stories of the supernatural, as the short tales contained in the collection which Herbert Giles renders under the title Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, are essentially humorous. Similarly, in painting and statuary many of the most memorable works exhibit the most refined sense of humor. China’s cultural legacy has too seldom been examined from this point of view.

Chinese thinkers have seldom if ever shown a condescending or deprecatory attitude toward humor, such as occasionally appears in the West, where tragedy has at times been rated above comedy and a fashion in literary criticism has even regarded comedy as trivia, all humorous verse as light verse, and the older Samuel Butler vastly less a poet than John Milton. Deprecation of the role of humor became conspicuous in Renaissance criticism, possibly from fear that truth-sayers would strip baroque rhetoric to its nakedness. Poor Chaucer knew nothing of all this.

Conditions in Chinese thought were much more favorable. The Taoists and the sect of Ch’an Buddhists made virtually a religion of humor, performing ceremonial dances about a sacred toad. Even the Confucian scholar-statesmen devised a scheme of values cordial to humor, to say the least. Their outlook tended more to the comedy of manners than to the comedy of the spheres, as envisaged by the Taoists. Further more, they cherished an attitude of detachment that invited a relaxed view. Conspicuous among their ideals was the amused sentiment of the retired statesman who from his quiet retreat in the country looked back upon the bustle of the great Court and smiled. To such men the whole theatre of the world seemed more or less a comedy.

It must be confessed that with these thoughts in mind one approaches the world of pictures with a legitimate doubt. Admittedly, the most prominent types of Chinese painting deal with landscapes, flower and bamboo subjects, or with a pious Buddhist subject matter. A casual examination, especially through Western eyes, invites the conclusion that these domains are almost devoid of humor. Broadly speaking, the view has considerable cogency, yet it should be held with important reservations. Indeed, the reservations may be as stimulating as the affirmations.

Landscape painters were unquestionably inspired with a sense of cosmology. They painted not so much the landscape as the universe, conscious of the forces whereby, as they understood, the universe was upheld. Behind the seen was the unseen, the yang and yin of the cosmos. But the habitual Chinese sense of the universals themselves was by no means wholly without humor. Insofar as I am aware, only one Judeo-Christian angel in three thousand years is reported to have smiled and he (or she) was more French than Christian, the celebrated Angel of the Annunciation at Rheims. Consider in contrast the Chinese mythology for the moon and stars and the celestial beings inhabiting them. Dante’s heaven blushed crimson with anger as it gazed earthward. The Chinese heaven smiled. This bears directly upon landscape painting, where a considerable number of the scenes are nocturnes. Moon and moonlight might suggest to the original viewers the distinctly amusing legends associated with them, such as the stories of the rabbit and the cassia tree. The delectable legends of the cowherd and the spinning maid were present in all starlight. Such a popular play as The Mating at Heaven’s Gate, with its story of the Oxherd and the Golden Star, brought the heavens themselves into the domain of humorously fortuitous human living. Although the ancient Greeks and countless other peoples read diverting legends in the stars, few peoples, if any, read them more eagerly and more often than the Chinese. India’s myths of the creation are certainly more diverting than those of the Jews and Christians and the Chinese are considerably more diverting than the Indian. Traditional Chinese thought not only humanized the heavens but brought them within range of laughter and smiles. Such a philosophy inevitably affects the spirit of landscape painting and all painting with subjects from nature.

Humor has its roots in animal vitality, which, when joined with the nature of man, reveals itself in the physical manifestations of smiling and laughter. It is at the same time one of man’s most primitive and most sophisticated attributes. The more life has developed, the more humor has developed. Inanimate nature may to some persons seem unproductive of humor but no one who sees beneath the surface of the animal world can fail to detect its germinal presence. Many of the higher animals unmistakably show a sense of fun and play. Apes in particular seem in this regard close to man. It is by no means surprising, then, that throughout the world even from the most primitive societies comes evidence that artists have found a rich source for humor in the depicting of animals. The classical Chinese not only lived close to animals, successfully domesticating many species, but showed an unusual fondness for animals and birds as pets. Their artists exhibit more humor in picturing these creatures than almost any other group of artists in the world. Laughing at or with animals seems a portal by which they enter into the more spacious domain of the comédie humaine. Of this in some detail later. But it should by no means be unrewarding to note how the foundations of a humorous attitude are laid by Chinese artists even in representation of nature outside the animal kingdom, with its worlds of beast, bird, fish, crustaceans, insects. Humor becomes pervasive.

This appears conspicuously in an early development of the notion of the fantastic. Much of the rock-formation of China appears to a foreigner fantastic and almost incredible. This condition the artists at an early date embraced with enthusiasm, even outdoing nature itself with their extravagance. The result may be described as humor already in the stage of the bizarre or grotesque. The national taste ran to the extravagant. Thus that representative poet, Tu Fu, especially enjoyed fantastic scenes in nature, seeking out ravines, gorges, caves, irregular cliffs, and rugged mountain walls. The Chinese had an eye for bats, clearly a mark of eccentricity. With much effort and expense they dragged curious, irregular rocks into their gardens and, as sculptors, fashioned stone with still more irregularity than nature. They proved themselves not only disciples of Confucian law and order, regimentation and stability, but lovers of the extremes of aesthetic eccentricity. One of the most famous of early poems, Ch’ü Yüan’s Li Sao, or Encountering Sorrow, is one of the most fantastic poems ever written. Its imagery is for the most part a vast panorama of earth and sky, a cosmic landscape and starscape. Sculptors delight in carving miniature mountains out of rocks, large or small, with trees, animals, and men shown in relief against the convoluted stone. A typical instance of such art is a relatively small piece of carved stone entitled “Mountain,” belonging to the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco. The notably sensitive curator, René-Yvon Lefebvre d’Argencé, remarks in the catalogue (1968) “A boulder carved in high relief shows Buddhist scenes in landscape settings. [“Boulder” is perhaps an exaggeration, since the jade itself is only six and three-quarters inches high and nine inches wide.] The whole scene is permeated with a slightly humoristic touch.”¹ Incidentally, as a companion piece the Avery Brundage exhibit presents a very similar piece, carved by the same artist, of only slightly larger dimensions but of lapis lazuli with Taoist instead of Buddhist symbolism. The two are equally “humoristic.” Each stone contains the representation of a temple. This is significant for the humanization of a Chinese landscape. Both religion and landscape are humanistic. The landscape is explicitly to be seen through human eyes. Hence man’s most precious infirmity, his sense of humor, has a place even in landscape painting. Only a few eccentrics, such as Ni Tsan, favored landscapes without at least one figure and as a rule with more; even Ni Tsan frequently admitted a pavilion for serious meditation, though, with metaphysical instinct, he preferred to have his philosopher invisible, like the empty niche symbolizing Buddha.

The botanical world marked an advance over the inanimate. Here, again, emphasis often fell on the incongruous and asymmetrical. Thus we have such pictures as Wen Cheng-ming’s famous juniper trees, with their amazing convolutions. Artists show the freedom of the humorist by favoring eccentric angles of vision, as Wu Chen’s album leaf known as “Fisherman.” One looks downward from high in air at a cliffside, a river, and a small boat. Again, the very hostility of nature may be turned into a kindly but somewhat perverse humor. An anonymous painting now in the National Museum at Taiwan, entitled “Fishing on a Snowy Day,” depicts an indefatigable enthusiast for fishing in the act of sneezing as result of the inclement weather. The picture is more landscape than figure painting but the figure gives to the whole a humorous aspect.

Obviously more rewarding in the examination of humor are the representations of animals and birds. Here it becomes clear at once that Chinese artists are in general disinclined to be either confirmed realists or idealists but instead are disposed to emphasize certain special characteristics. This results on the one hand in humor close to caricature and on the other in exhilarating fantasy. Though occasionally the figures seem naturalistic, this is by no means their primary quality. Here it must be acknowledged that the viewer should proceed with caution. The Western tradition is on the whole to idealize animals, much as it has been to idealize the human form. The Chinese prefer a more diversified representation, using bodies to express a great variety of conceptions. Degas as sculptor represented the female figure in an amazing number of postures but the figure itself was almost always that of a shapely dancer. The Chinese were, of course, singularly disinterested in the nude and peculiarly attracted to an amazing variety of costumes and postures. Their imagination preferred freedom and scope to conventional grace. In this respect, too, they escaped the fashion-plate manner so popular in the declining period of Japanese art. When depicting animals, also, they preferred to explore a vast range of posture and at the same time to use the natural form as base for departure in terms of art. They caught their animals in the most surprising attitudes, which, however, need not have been impossible. Indeed, their explorations up to a certain point present extremely faithful observations. Yet surprising the spectator with ever new observations, they shake off conventionalized notions and stimulate his sense of humor. They go still further, almost always taking their cue from nature, and press forward to meaningful exaggeration. Thus special moods are established. Chinese artists created a positively enormous vocabulary for the bird and animal worlds. The incongruity of their art not only reflects the incongruities in nature itself but presses beyond them into meaningful and imaginative creation that is at once observation and discovery. Their water buffaloes, dogs, pigs, cows, horses, sheep, bears, toads are at once derived from intimate observation and emphatically are more than nature. They are at once at home in nature and inhabitants of a world beyond it that is both natural and essentially human.

From one point of view the Chinese have much more the attitude of the naturalist than do the artists and writers in India and the West. The age-old tradition in lands to the west and south is to retell beast stories that are moral allegories. The animal story is an exemplum, a parable for man. So Aesop taught wisdom and so La Fontaine affected to instruct children. Although the Chinese are one of the most moralistic of people, traditionally finding in Confucius their ultimate master, when turning to nature they customarily become pure artists. Their departure from mere unimaginative naturalism leads by easy gradations into humor. Art’s peculiar contribution creates an incongruity when placed against the unimaginative reportage of nature. Here lie the seeds of humor. Frequently the seed burgeons into unmistakable humor. This conspicuously proves the case where animals or birds are depicted.

Doubtless the strong social and ethical bias of the Chinese to some degree sobered their representation of man’s social world in art. Good evidence exists that they took special pleasure on turning to animals as a domain where relaxation from ethical restrictions was found. At least the birds and buffaloes did not have to accord with Confucian precept! What a welcome relief man finds everywhere in turning to the animals, at least to such as are not dangerous beasts of prey! They become simply and naively lovable. Also the affinity commonly existing between animals and children is to be noted. The urban man of the modern world, especially in the West, too easily overlooks this. He loses what is in reality a substantial therapeutic asset. Animals may in this respect be better friends and guardians for man than angels. The Chinese somehow contrived to retain and to profit from this childlike propensity even when they also, with an inspired freedom from logical consistency, developed strong ethical and intellectual faculties. The birds and beasts became to at least a perceptible degree man’s liberators from his own self-wrought confinements. To live imaginatively with animals was to live in a world without walls. While Western thinking penned animals up within man-wrought fences, Chinese thought liberated man by giving him an infinitely varied and multitudinous society of comrades. Let us never underestimate the basic meaning of animals in Chinese painting and sculpture!

Religious concepts are important even in so specialized an area as the attitude toward animals and their representation in art and literature. If, as some Christian thought argues, the physical world is inherently evil and man’s own physical or animal being suspect, animals, as representing the physical side of man’s nature, will themselves be suspect. If, on the contrary, a prevalent belief exists in the transmigration of souls, even though animals are graded from high to low and man is regarded as the highest form of earthly life, the view of animals will be relatively cordial. The latter view, existing for many centuries in China, assisted in bringing man into a comparatively cordial relation to the animal world. He had something to learn from animals. Never in China could an epithet such as “beastly” have acquired a derogatory meaning.

It will be well to begin a systematic survey with the domestic animals not only because these are the most prevalent in the humorous images of art but because it was unquestionably through them that the Chinese people acquired the greater part of their singularly felicitous relation with the animal kingdom. The path from the farmyard led outward through an open gate to the very limits of the universe.

Perhaps not all animals and birds are viewed with a sense of humor but most of them are so treated. That most useful creature, the water buffalo, affords a good example and is probably the most often seen in a humorous aspect. Of course the representation differs on different occasions. Close-ups, where the physiognomy is revealed in considerable detail, are more likely to be humorous than distant views. The Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses a picture attributed to Chiang Ts’an, a river scene with a hundred buffaloes. The scroll is diverting rather than humorous. Here as in a large number of pictures the gaiety of the scene is enhanced by the presence of innumerable small boys to whom the care of the bulky animals is assigned. The Chinese early discovered that such boys could ride on the backs of these powerful, clumsy creatures and lead them about where adult men encountered considerable resistance. The youths herded and tamed the unruly beasts. A humorous incongruity with an optimistic conclusion arose from the spectacle of children represented in the pictures as singularly small and agile while the vast animals beneath them reluctantly but surely followed their guidance. These conditions exist in Chiang Ts’an’s scroll but the breadth of the landscape dwarfs the humorous intention. The river and its shores diminish the importance of the living figures. A closer position is required to bring the humorous meaning to full fruition. As a matter of fact, most Chinese pictures with animals are close-ups or, so to speak, animal portraits. This holds especially true in the drawings of buffaloes. Animals as grotesque as water buffalo call for relatively little distortion from the artist’s hand to produce a humorous effect. If seen in zoological gardens, especially through the eye of a child, they will appear at least amusing. The artists are untiring in emphasizing and exaggerating their smile-inducing quality. In sculptural form the animal is frequently represented cut from a small piece of jade. In such cases he is generally curled up into a compact ball, asleep, his head resting on his thigh. This is the buffalo happily tamed. No attendant is required. In pictures he is usually accompanied by the herdboy, the latter a tiny figure quite out of proportion to the crude beast, who invariably appears humorously awkward. Sometimes the boy has a staff in hand; in one delightful picture, now in the Cleveland Museum, we see both mother and calf while the boy, confident of controlling his charges, turns his back to them, leans against a gnarled tree trunk and plays with a bird in hand. The mother buffalo shows humorous solicitude for her lively offspring. In these pictures the animals occupy the center of attention. Sometimes, however, the buffalo shares this almost equally with one or more humans. Thus in a much loved picture in the Boston Museum of Art we see a buffalo staggering forward beneath a peasant returning from a village feast, while the attendant boy struggles to support the drunken man precariously perched on the animal’s rugged back.

In general the evidence of art suggests that the Chinese found dogs more amusing than useful. Yet from the earliest times the dog is depicted, especially in sculpture. Well does the discerning Sherman Lee observe of one of the earliest representations: “The seated mastiff in the Musée Cernuschi is one of the appealing animals in the Han ceramic menagerie—one of thousands of tomb figurines.”² Such images were placed in the tombs not only to protect but to divert the worthy men and women who had passed into the nether darkness. They represent the road by which entities pass from what we call real life into art’s immortality. The domestic pet becomes a heathen guardian angel.

A delightful creature who seems to be a puppy is found in the Avery Brundage collection. René-Yvon d’Argencé’s description for a catalogue of the Brundage treasures gives without any peculiar bias or intention a faithful indication of its humorous quality: “This seated watchdog barks as his tail wags. His large head tops a long, pillar-like neck; his face is square, with flat forehead and eyes in relief; the moustache is incised. The dog’s ears are leaf-like and the legs stumpy. A thick, brown glaze covers the red pottery.”³ The figure is dated as Han (206 B.C. to A.D. 221). It is inconceivable that it should not have been viewed with a sense of humor. Incidentally, the creature is totally unlike the compact aforementioned mastiff. They are similar only in being dogs and humorous. Another no less amusing representation of a dog, totally different from either of the preceding, is a bronze statuette now in Czechoslovakia. Dispensing altogether with curves, this deals only in angles, rendering the image all the more artificial. The dog, which seems also to be a puppy, looks upward while its tail, almost completely erect, attains a considerably greater height than its head. The effect is of extreme eagerness, vitality, humor. One longs to throw it an offering of dog biscuit.

The common pig, by nature a well-compacted animal, lent itself especially to three-dimensional representation. Again, from the earliest times known to us this animal played a conspicuous part in the Chinese art-menagerie; again the Brundage collection presents an interesting early specimen well described by the curator, who writes: “The animal rests on its voluminous belly but its head is raised and alert. The rounded contours are barely disturbed by the sketchy surface details which indicate ears, limbs and tail. The eyes are carved in relief, the nostrils perforated.”⁴ Incidentally, this jade figure is less than four inches long. The Indiana University Museum possesses a rude pig with a prodigiously long snout and tail conveniently curved to serve as handle. The impression made by these figures is incontestably diverting.

That the Chinese lived intimately and happily with their domestic animals is indicated by a pig from the T’ang period in form of a headrest. Although the snout, eyes, and ears are almost alarmingly realistic, the whole is designed to lie solidly on a couch, the sleeper’s neck resting in the slight indentation between the animal’s head and haunches. There are virtually no indications of legs. It is certainly a humorous conception. One wonders what carnal dreams the sleeper may have had with head reposing on such an image.

The cow was never as prevalent or highly regarded in China as in India. In their art the Chinese made only minor distinctions between cow and buffalo. This has even resulted in some questionable nomenclature. Thus in William Cohn’s generally excellent book, Chinese Art, a picture is said to represent a milch cow when presumably it represents a buffalo followed by its calf. Similar as the representations of the two animals are, two jade figurines depicted in H. F. E. Visser’s valuable book, Asiatic Art, are, on the contrary, rightly designated cows. These have singularly humorous, bovine features with the artist’s attention chiefly on the facial expression. There is none of the rugged, restless sentiment exuding even from the representation of the sleeping buffalo. A humorous docility is well expressed as typical of the bovine character.

Whereas the Indians worshipped the cow, the Chinese at least gave extreme honor to the horse, which had a valuable part in both their domestic and military life. It was even more important in Court life than on the farm, the use of horses, especially in the hunt, bringing high prestige. Breeding of horses received great attention. At first the animals were employed conspicuously with chariots; at a later date they were commonly used as mounts. Fine horses were welcomed as tribute to the Chinese Court from the tribes living to the north and west of China’s borders. A vigorous school of horse-painting developed where far more than in most provinces of Chinese art idealization prevailed. It would be preposterous to say, of course, that in the minds of the Chinese the unadorned horse held a place comparable to the nude human figure in Western art, yet the statement would have at least some element of truth. Under these circumstances the humorous factor so conspicuous in much Chinese animal painting and sculpture found in horse-painting much less scope and play. Landscape and flower painting excepted, few areas of their art won as great favor as the painting and sculpture of horses. This held true for several centuries. By and large, the horse was not a subject for humor. Yet there are occasional exceptions which are of considerable interest.

For much of the most cheerful work in Chinese art one goes to the tomb figurines. Occasionally, there can be no doubt, such figures appear ridiculous simply on account of the amateurishness in the technique or the unpretentious spirit of the folk craftsmen. These clay images were hardly regarded by the Chinese themselves as objects of aesthetic distinction. They were for use and diversion in the future life. Specimens of horse-figures with a mildly humorous connotation are found in almost all museums specializing in Oriental art. As an instance may be mentioned one in the Metropolitan Museum described as “T’ang or earlier.” Here emphasis falls most heavily on two heads, those of horse and rider. Each has a threatening air; the horse has its mouth opened wide, revealing its menacing teeth; the rider is apparently a soldier, possibly a barbarian, with a singularly grim countenance. The whole is remarkably compact, almost like conventional figures for chess. The over-all effect even to its first viewers must have appeared risible. The fierceness of the animal is matched only by its rider. A tomb horse giving entirely the opposite impression but almost equally risible is depicted in Lubor Hajek’s Chinese Art. Here emphasis falls on the horse’s docility. There is no rider but an extremely commodious saddle and ample saddlecloth. The head is large, suggesting a stupid but thoroughly well-meaning and amiable creature. This horse looks more like a chair than a charger. Many T’ang horses, on the contrary, admirably express speed and grace. The animal in question is a proletarian or middle-class animal, for comfort of the rider and practical farm use. It would be ridiculous to use it for hunting.

The lower the animal descends on the social scale for horses, the more likely the artist is to take liberties with it and suggest a humorous attitude. George Kao, in his anthology of Chinese humor, relates a striking scene with Chinese farmers whom he once saw by the roadside laughing uproariously at the vain efforts of a team of horses to drag a heavily loaded wagon up a steep hill.⁵ This attitude in one form or another may be traced far back in Chinese history. As work-horses depart from the ideal form of horses in the service of the aristocracy they may well appear in the native eyes to take on humorous qualities. There is a discrepancy between the practical and the ideal. It is a view with which we are familiar today. We think of the race-horse as an ideal object of pure beauty, to be viewed seriously and with admiration. The common donkey or mule, whether laboring in Asia Minor or in the American Southwest, is at the same time an object for ridicule and affection. These are precisely the conditions agreeable to humor. There is neither satire nor pure admiration but only the necessary distortions of real life. So in the National Palace Museum, now in Taiwan, is a picture by Ma Yüan, a Sung artist, entitled “Through Snowy Mountains at Dawn.” Two heavily laden donkeys, or possibly horses, with long, outstretched ears, are stepping with utmost care along a snowy pass over the mountains. They are the central features of the picture, although the inevitable custodian trudges behind his animals, carrying a staff to urge them on and warming his hands by holding them within reach of his breath. The animals are at once noble and absurd, patiently plodding onward upon their assigned task. One appears to be carrying eatables, the other possibly a load of firewood. They also carry with them the singularly Chinese sense of the ridiculous.

The camel is at best an ungainly animal, almost invariably exposing himself to the brush of the humorous artist. Naturally, the Chinese, who not infrequently encountered these animals, driven in caravans across the western deserts, took full advantage of their opportunity to exploit the subject. From the south, also, though more rarely, came the elephant, likewise an animal of eccentric features by no means overlooked by the artists. Whereas the Indians, who were on the whole much more familiar with elephants, treated them with a striking realism that left small place for humor, the Chinese almost invariably represent the elephant in humorous disproportion, rather as a mythical than as a real being. (Similarly, of course, they romanticized the lion, which was generally unfamiliar to them.) Elephants of a decorative character are frequently found in the later or decadent stages of Chinese art. The subject especially attracted makers of decorated, painted porcelain, where brilliant coloring replaced the creature’s sober gray and added to the gay, humorous effect of the already fantastic form. But like most themes in Chinese art, this was ancient as well as relatively modern. For example, a bronze elephant survives from the fifth century. It has a humorously upturned trunk and face, a huge shield hanging down beside its stubby legs, a large tortoise upon its back, and, ascending to more than twice the elephant’s own height, an elaborately decorated pagoda. The impression is still and doubtless originally was inescapably amusing. No elephant has ever presented less of a menace. The lifted trunk serves to balance the otherwise overpowering pagoda, signaling a friendly greeting to all observers.

Last among the domesticated animals to be presented in a humorous light is the sheep. This subject was likewise occasion for much caprice and fantasy. Staffs were often decorated with jade sheep, thought symbolical of good fortune. The Imperial collection possesses a black jade ram with a highly heroic and imperious expression on its face. Perching on top of its rear haunches and looking backward is a diminutive shepherd only a quarter the size of the animal itself. The human is completely dwarfed by this absurdly arrogant beast, which is obviously created in the spirit of fun and humor, even though a pastoral sheep-deity may be invoked.

Such were the chief animals of use to man, the creatures which he knew best and which served artists and craftsmen best for purposes of an uninhibited and entertaining art. But imagination soared far beyond the obvious province of utility, endowing most creatures known to mankind with some peculiar power and fascination. Mythology got to work where utility left off. Later in this study, after real animals have been considered, we shall turn to the purely mythological creatures, the chimeras of the human mind, such as dragons, which were lineally descended from actual lizards. But, not unnaturally, the toad, to which Shakespeare ascribed supernatural qualities, proves especially fascinating and significant. Both by virtue of its form and habits the toad is, clearly, one of the most extraordinary of creatures. It became a leading stage-property in the rituals of Taoism, associated with legends of immortality. Its grotesque form is seen in countless small ornaments. The toad, nature’s ideal monster, is found also in many paintings dedicated to a mystic subject-matter. Sages or immortals are seen to contemplate it. The Metropolitan Museum has a scroll on this subject. Sometimes, as in a painting by Liu Chun, in the Boston Museum of Art, the sages are presented in wild, drunken antics performed in veneration of the toad. This picture is entitled “Three Sennin Dancing Around a Toad.” The celebrants are mad with glee in contemplation of this absurd-looking creature.

Most explicitly comic and amusing of all animals is, presumably, the monkey. Chinese artists soon developed a special relish for its proverbial antics. Best of all creatures this mimics and seemingly ridicules the antics of man. So the leading figure in the most humorous of all Chinese narratives, already referred to, the novel well known to English readers by way of Arthur Waley’s translation under the title Monkey, has for its hero the pilgrim called Monkey, whose habits of thought and action lend meaning to the name. His closest friend, it will be recalled, is likewise half-animal and half-man, Pigsy. One of these figures exercises ingenuity and agility, the other pursues purely physical pleasures and the luxury of idleness. The monkey had once been turned to stone but seldom in art appeared in that material. The free-moving, spontaneous Chinese brushstroke served best to depict him. Consequently, he is found in countless paintings. Many of these are works of the Ch’an artists, impelled by mystical inspiration. Quite notably these monks even executed pictures of themselves where they approach the uncouth appearance of monkeys. The Chinese government possesses a remarkable painting by an unknown artist entitled “Monkeys at Play in a Loquat Tree.” Some of the best monkey pictures are by the inspired Ch’an artist, the monk Mu Ch’i. Several of these reached Japan, where the subject won great popularity, especially for screen painting. Among Mu Ch’i’s works now in Japan is a delectable scroll, “Mother Monkey and Child.” The drawing is especially inspired from the humorous point of view. The mother’s face is virtually a circle wholly bright with a tiny, dark nose and mouth for its center. The legs are fantastically outstretched to right and left along the limb of a tree. The child clings desperately to its parent, who, though all but eyeless, appears to be staring at the viewer. The pair is perched upon the limb of an aged pine. Clearly, the painters and their public derived endless fun from the representation of these erratic creatures.

To proceed with other beasts, the bear is almost always treated disrespectfully in a palpably humorous manner. He sometimes dances on his hind legs. More often he crouches in the manner of a singularly absurd dog, with, however, an odd facial expression peculiar to himself. A remarkably amusing bear in gilt bronze, with an infectious smile, deriving from the Chou Dynasty, was at one time in the Oppenheim collection. A figure of a slightly different but equally humorous sort is now in the Indiana University Museum. The former is comically pathetic, the latter appears humorously affectionate, the type of creature that a child would long to embrace.

The frog, quite often seen, is for artists little more than another toad, although to the original viewers the latter enjoyed more supernatural properties. Yet there is enough realism to make the two readily distinguishable. Thus there can be no doubt that the creature depicted in H. F. E. Visser’s afore-mentioned book, Asiatic Art (page 145), is a frog and not a toad. This bronze object was evidently a receptacle for some liquid. The streamlining of the figure immediately suggests its watery home. Especially the mouth and eyes emphatically belong to a frog. The figure is perspicuously amusing. By far the most diverting Chinese frog, so far as I am aware, to be seen in the United States is in the Detroit Museum, on a scroll by Ch’ien Hsuan, also depicting insects and water-plants. The frog supplies its most humorous figure.

Tigers were generally found too much of a menace to be treated lightly, as were lions; the latter were less often actually known and existed for most Chinese artists only in a world of their own convention or fantasy. That both were ranked high by virtue of their pride of place in the world of animals tended to divorce them from a sense of levity. But where there was a will there was a way and the Chinese even found occasion at times to treat both within the area of comedy. The tiger in particular offered a decorative motif which, though not humorous, was at least a source of pleasure. At times the distortions of a figure raise the question whether or not humor is intended. Certainly for a modern and quite possibly for an ancient, the bronze tiger of the Chou Dynasty in the Schoenlicht Collection has a humorous intention. It lies poised on the middle of its back, its rear feet firmly on the ground, its front shoulders lifted, its massive head turned completely around and also, like its fore paws, raised high in air. The distortion is surely comic. Again, nothing is impossible in religion. There is a tenth-century picture, now in Japan, by Shih K’o, of a Ch’an monk in meditation with his head resting on the shoulder of a tiger which has been cast by magic spells into profound slumber. Both saint and tiger are asleep to this world, though the sage’s spirit is presumably in a supernal sphere. No conceivable religious or mystical conviction can deny the picture a high degree of humor. The sage in his capacity as magician has performed his masterpiece in magic.

Partly from their invaders from the north and west the Chinese, when they so desired, acquired an heroic style in representation of tigers. Their lions, viewed by modern eyes strictly as lions, are less convincing as representations of known animals, though several of the colossal guardian figures of lions with wings are noble and impressive. As early as the T’ang period lions were treated facetiously. Thus in the collection of Baron Koyata Iwasaki, in Japan, is a pair of ceramic lions shown in undignified attitudes, one yawning and obviously sleepy, scratching his neck with his paw, the other, a blasé expression on his face, also scratching his neck. In Brussels is still another T’ang lion, made of iron inlaid with silver and gold, whose muscles are so fantastically distended that it must have been all but impossible to take his show of force seriously. The king of beasts in the role of braggart is unquestionably reduced to ridicule. Nevertheless, in some instances, whatever may be the impression on a man in the twentieth century, the original intention remains, to say the least, unclear. How far are the guardian lions to be taken seriously? The presumption is that to begin with such figures were erected in full earnestness. But views seem to have altered. Many brightly painted china lions of comparatively recent times presumably stand much closer to being comic than to being serious. Instead of glowering with anger they appear to be smiling with a sense of security. With the centuries the lion image became increasingly baroque. It also became decreasingly significant when considered from the aesthetic point of view. In time the lion more resembles a fantastic distortion of a dog than a lord of beasts. Whatever humor these figures may once have had is dissipated in frivolity.

That diminutive lion, the household cat, is well known in Chinese art. It is more often met in the softer medium of painting than in sculpture. The intrinsic beauty so commonly found in the real animals of this species may have somewhat discouraged the Chinese humorists. At least the cat is never demoted as is the lordly lion. When he is shown he is usually treated respectfully and endowed with the sophistication that cats possess at their best. But the subject may be seen from still another angle. Cats embody humor as elusive as the smile of the famous Cheshire cat. They are often shown as adjuncts to refined, courtly life, in company of ladies of the household and their children. They constitute a vital part of a picture that is amusing as a whole. An unforgettable and delightful painting in the Boston Museum shows ladies, children, and a cat all in an elegant setting. The entire scene is conceived in an atmosphere of high comedy but this comedy lies rather in an emanation of the cat than in the actual depiction of the animal itself, which is both gracious and idealistic. The mood represented in the cat-pictures is often appropriately subtle, reticent, rarely if ever hilarious. Thus the gifted eighteenth-century painter, Chin Nung, gives us a cat turned away from the observer, intently watching some object beyond the picture’s border and forever unknown. This indirection impinges on humor though it may not actually cross into its territory.

Another of the lesser animals occasionally provoking the artist’s smile is the rabbit, found in both sculpture and painting. Timidity is, quite naturally, its leading quality to attract attention. This as a rule is accentuated by the rabbit’s peculiarly long, sensitive ears. Like many frightened animals in Asian art, he habitually looks backward over his shoulder at an imagined pursuer. It is in this position that he appears, for example, on a thirteenth-century vase now in the British Museum.

Actually, there is virtually no animal which the Chinese artist saw or even heard of that he was not inclined to depict with a sympathetic sense of humor. Man was, on the whole, safely master. He could afford to smile at the endlessly variegated forms of life existing by his side. The artist does not stop short of the hideous or the bizarre. He finds himself at home among insects and vermin. Take, for example, the rat, subject of one of the most deftly written lyrics in the Confucian Book of Songs. There are many sly and clever pictures of this rodent, almost always, like the verses in the Book of Songs, instinct with humor. The rat is first of all a bold but sly scavenger. Very well, then, the inspired artist, Ch’ien Hsuan (A.D. 1235-c. 1290), gives us a picture, now in Japan, of a family of rats in process of eating a melon already half consumed. It is an idyl out of garbage. The mother rat has already eaten her way through the heart of the fruit so that her extremely long, thin tail protrudes from one end while her head peeks forth from the other. She is scuffling out small pieces of the melon on which her eager brood, three diminutive rats, are feeding. The picture is a bizarre idyl of decadence. It unquestionably has wry humor, quite unlike the idealized still-life paintings of ripe and perfect melons or the exquisite images of those super-rats that have won elegance and respectability, the always graceful squirrels. The treatment of still life is aesthetic without humor; that of the pert squirrel is as a rule half-way between the idealization of fruit and the slightly sardonic view of the rat. Ch’ien also has a delightful picture, now in the National Gallery at Taiwan, of a squirrel whose tail is ampler than its singularly agile body. It would be impossible here to overpraise the delicate drawing of feet and toes but such art remains for the most part innocent of open and overt humor.

As already indicated, the freedom of play for the imagination afforded by subject-matter drawn from the less familiar animals encouraged the insatiable thirst of the Chinese for humorous representation that reached its peak in their creation of strange or wholly fabulous and imaginary beings. Especially diverting are the representations of animals as exotic from the Chinese point of view as the rhinoceros. A bronze image of this creature in the form of a tsun vessel presumed to be from approximately the eleventh century B.C. is in the Avery Brundage Collection. An amusing feature here is the relation of body to bowl. This major portion of the figure is actually more bowl than body, though four extremely short, stumpy legs, with naturalistically shaped hoofs, support it. The protruding element, as in all such vessels, is the oversized head, wearing a curiously sombre and humorless expression that conversely stimulates the sense of the ludicrous.

The artists found bizarre fascination in the almost incredible world of insects, such creatures as the praying mantis gaining their special favor. There can be no question that they saw these creatures with a dash of humor, though their humor has a slightly sharper spice and more acidity than most humor in the West. Their imagination was as much at home in air and sea as on the surface of the earth. Among the marine life such beings as the crab commanded their curious interest. To Fan An-jun, for example, is ascribed a large hanging scroll, now in Japan, containing images of fish (carp) and, in the extreme foreground, a meticulously drawn crab. Never has this crustacean seemed more diverting or “out of this world,” as the familiar idiom expresses it.

Some fish evoke so pure and innocent an aesthetic experience that in their representation humor takes small part or none at all. Yet occasionally fish are as bizarre as any insect. This is often suggested in representations on ceramic objects. Chinese art was not only a menagerie but an aquarium. The Minneapolis Museum of Art has a dish, possibly at one time a wedding gift, where two completely grotesque fish are molded in relief on the inside. They are singularly gay and powerful little creatures. Occasionally a dish or bowl reveals fish true to the general nature of fish but presumably such as never were, with vastly protruding goggle eyes and flower-like fins and tail. They are truly monsters, half way to becoming dragons.

The dragon encountered on land, in air and in the water and, from the modern point of view, essentially a fabulous being, is the last subject, save birds, that calls for consideration here. The scholar who today approaches it must, of course, make careful adjustments in his thinking, since for Westerners dragons are not only fabulous but an extinct species. Not over five hundred years ago all Europeans believed in their existence, although in the West they never played as large a role as in China, homeland of dragons. There can be no end to the lore and history of Chinese dragons. They are both less sinister and more eclectic than dragons in the West. The Emperor or any powerful man might through symbol or metaphor be represented as a dragon. The conception was, then, half spiritual and half materialistic. Any great natural force might be conceived as a dragon. When boating on rough waters or sailing over a deep lake one might see real, corporeal dragons emerging from the waves. In general these monsters implied a force either for good or ill so potent as on no account to be viewed lightly. The spirit of humor was not in them. But here again there were important exceptions. A dragon might preside over a festival and enhance the general gaiety; even in itself it might be a creature to regard humorously.

Given these almost bewildering inconsistencies, the dragon in art does not always explain itself in the sense that it exists in a known context or reveals explicit characteristics of a symbolic nature. It stands freely by itself or crawls on the surface of a plate or bowl. Interpretation of whatever symbolic meaning it has, if any, becomes somewhat perplexing. Dragons live in labyrinths. Threading one’s way toward them must always be something of an intuitive experience, possibly a mysterious or even mystical adventure. As composite creatures, fashioned of reptile, bird, and beast, their incongruity suggests the very heart of humor.

The Chinese lived as naturally with dragons as with birds and beasts. Their common-sense, useful lives, following the dictates of Confucian thought and discipline, were relieved, as the sage himself presumed, by the boldest flights of creative imagination. This emphatically included the privileges and risks of consorting with dragons. Miniature dragons disported themselves on the surface of early sacred ritual bowls of bronze. Humor provided part of this free play of poetic fancy which was the very air wherein the dragon lived and moved. This compact between utility and fancy is well symbolized in those porcelain bowls or vases whose handles are either fully developed or incipient dragons. The useful vase which itself may be entirely plain or devoid of ornament may stand for prosaic, down-to-earth experience; the gay little handles, with their dragon scales, attest a play of unrestrained imagination that almost inevitably includes pleasure, smiles, and laughter. The little figure may represent either a lizard or the Emperor. The dragons of the ancient Teutonic world, as revealed in Beowulf, are unquestionably forces of unmitigated evil, as sinister as the Germanic conception of witchcraft. If possible, they should be stamped under foot. Western conceptions of sin and evil are compacted in them and come to vivid imaginative reality. To that great symbolist, Edmund Spenser, a good dragon was barely thinkable. The Chinese dragon, on the contrary, is far less a creature of a morally conceived universe. On the one hand it is by no means alien to the modern conceptions promulgated by science of natural or even of mental powers; on the other hand it stands as a vivid symbol of freedom of the creative imagination and the sheer joy of far-roaming fantasy. As symbol of vitalism in all its phases, this dragon-world must include the joy that resides in humor, the underlying, deep-seated sense of the incongruous within the soul.

Many dragons appear scarcely more terrifying than would a puppy with wings. To be specific, consider a celadon altar jar of the eleventh century from the Brundage Collection, as superbly illustrated in one of the Museum’s catalogues (1968). The dragon encircling its neck is certainly a gay, florid creature, no more menacing than the tiny puppy with upturned nose and tail that tops the jar’s cover. This is a happy dragon; it can only be imagined as humorous.

Two dragons admirably illustrated in the aforementioned book, Asiatic Art, by H. F. E. Visser, contribute to this study, the first (plates 29-31), shown from three distinct postures revealing side, back, and head. The whole is flamboyant in the extreme. The mouth is closed but with a suggestion that it is toothless. The excrescences are so large, the body is so small, that no menace whatsoever is suggested. This figure is from the Chou period. The second dragon, dating from the Six Dynasties (Visser, plate 61), is equally extravagant, though in different ways. Its horns are those of a common snail. They are balanced by a long, slender beard. The pose is angry and alarmed but certainly not terrifying, suggesting an excited puppy playing the watch-dog, whose bark is far worse than its bite. Both are admirable works of art and both are clearly intended not only to give aesthetic pleasure but to arouse awareness of the preposterous and the absurd. No one would, of course, propose that the stupendous dragon-monsters on the world-famous scroll in the Boston Museum of Art are to be conceived in any spirit but that of high seriousness. But dragons are really of almost as many species as birds and beasts.

Unquestionably that legendary bird, the phoenix, belongs as a rule to a world of solemn, pious ceremony where humor is out of the question. As seen, for example, on the richly embroidered mandarin squares with their symbols for the Emperor, the elements of the universe, and the mandarin insignia of office, humor remains unthinkable. Fantastic as the divine bird flying sunward seems to modern eyes, nothing humorous or amusing is intended. Nevertheless, with the habitual ambivalence in Chinese thought and expression, this is by no means at all times the destiny of the phoenix. Especially where the context is genial, the bird may share in the general good humor. A table-dish, for example, not intended for the more solemn rituals, when ornamented by the phoenix may have a smiling aspect. Such is the case with a gold dish now in a private collection in Holland and pictured in H. F. E. Visser’s Asiatic Art (plate 48). Again the gaiety implicit in almost all representations of the phoenix, suggesting a bird that outdoes even the peacock in splendor, assists the image to pass over into the realm of entertainment. Many times the viewer of an ancient figurine may seriously be at a loss as to whether a colorful domestic cock, a peacock, or a phoenix is intended. Whatever may in fact have been the case, even presuming that a fixed interpretation existed in the artist’s mind, there is virtually no doubt that the image carries a considerable element of humor. Sometimes this is indicated by the boldly flourishing tail. This may be seen in the bronze image of a bird now in a Czechoslovakian collection, brilliantly illustrated in Chinese Art, by Lubor Hajek. Like so many creations of the Chinese mind, the phoenix is extremely human and hence a creature of many contrasting moods, one of which incontestably is humor.

Let us consider what the Chinese when in quest of comedy achieved in relation to birds that are not legendary, like the phoenix, but familiar species in nature. No species served this purpose better than the duck. As humorists throughout the world have discovered, the duck and especially the duckling commonly provoke our sense of humor. In this regard an American may well recall Walt Disney’s Donald Duck. The phrase in American slang, “queer duck,” is a further indication. All the Western World knows the tale of the ugly duckling. Similar thoughts by no means escaped the Chinese.

The duck was generally regarded as an auspicious bird; the brilliant mandarin duck, in particular, was conceived as living closely in pairs and hence as symbol of conjugal fidelity. Ducks swam in a whole sea of cheerfulness, living in an atmosphere inevitably conducive to humor. Moreover, like most water-birds, ducks could readily be depicted in peculiarly amusing postures. Graceful in many of their movements when swimming, their forms themselves, especially when seen out of water, are likely to appear ludicrous. Their necks may be bent in an unexpected fashion, equally surprising and amusing. Sculpture affords the ideal medium in which to capture their absurdity. Their bills are curiously shaped, their webbed feet ungainly for walking, their tails superfluous and preposterous. All these features and others of like nature are to be found, for example, in a pair of porcelain ducks admirably photographed by Visser (plate 96). Even when the duck is imagined within the water, the figure may take on an amusing aspect. Merely the turn of the neck of an unglazed model of a duck as illustrated in Basil Gray’s Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain has an unmistakably humorous effect. In the same volume is a photograph of a celadon saucer with an incised design of a duck among waves. The image may be described as a transparency, where the entire bird is visible in profile, no distinction being made between the parts above and under the waterline. This method of presentation reveals the feet in process of swimming. An amusing balance is surprisingly disclosed between the large, forward-stretching neck and the backward-bending legs. Every outline of the bird, as in the protruding breast and raised tail, is amusing. This is, surely, the creation of an artist blessed not only with acute observation of nature but with a well developed sense of the ridiculous.

Ducks frequently have a deliciously comic expression in the features of bill, head and eyes. A comic duck perfectly answering this description appears on a bowl of the Sung period belonging to the Detroit Institute of Arts and illustrated by James Cahill in The Art of Southern Sung China. The humorous waddle of the duckling is also depicted on a plate photographed in the aforementioned volume by Lubor Hajek.

The duck appears in virtually every medium of Chinese art. It is present with a strong comic effect in a vessel of the Ch’ien-lung period of cloisonné enamel with a copper base, in the Chinese National Collection. This duck carries a pagodalike structure on its back above which rises a tall handle. The vessel stands on rather tall and extremely stout legs. There is a flowing tail but the most humorous features in the entire bizarre image are the sharply bent but protruding neck and the impertinently outstretched head and bill. Who could possibly see or use such a vessel without a genuine sense of amusement?

The owl is another bird recognized the world over as extremely expressive and possessing decidedly amusing features. So stupid looking is it that it has very generally been thought wise, a politician who only feigns dullness. Its incongruous habits arise partly from the fact that it blinks stupidly by day and flies with extraordinary precision at night. The wise old owl amuses us. In Western iconography it lurks under the dignified robe of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, to some degree redeeming her well-deserved reputation for didacticism and prudery. None of these connotations are found in the East, yet the bird there has also become a symbol for the inscrutable, the oracular, and, more often, the amusing. Many examples might be cited; only a few must suffice.

The owl appears to have been one of the earliest bird-symbols to have been established in China, much earlier, for example, than the phoenix or the duck. Thus from the Shang Dynasty, or, roughly speaking, the fourteenth century B.C., comes an owl in marble, now in the Academia Sinica, Formosa. It was a tomb figure but this, as we have seen, is far from excluding a humorous meaning. This owl has two stumpy legs of elephantine thickness, which support it as a tripod by means of an amusingly curved tail. Its body is covered with incised symbolic designs. There is virtually no neck. Feathers are indicated on its head, which is from the standpoint of proportion enormous. The ears are completely human. The eyes are huge and glaring, the prominent beak protruding from a curiously bold angular design like an asymmetrical window conceived by some modern architect. The general effect of this completely stylized figure is, strange to say, astonishingly naturalistic. It expresses precisely that conjunction of absurdity and self-importance found in real owls, especially in the young.

This type of figure is extremely familiar among early bronzes. Examples are seen in virtually every major collection of ancient Chinese art, some of the best being in the Freer Collection, Washington. Naturally, the form, with certain modifications, passed into almost all media. Two extremely amusing specimens are in the collection of the King of Sweden. These figurines, five and a half inches high, so simplified as to appear virtually as owl chicks or even owl embryos, are Chou pottery, described as a pair of containers. The form is chunky; legs are minute; small handles are attached to the wings; heads are detachable; expression is pert. Few images are more diverting.

To the Chinese mind the crane is a peculiarly sacred, symbolic, significant bird. In particular, it signifies longevity and felicity. In all respects it is a good augury. Two features, then, contribute to its possessing a humorous connotation: its generally benign meaning and the obviously fantastic form of this long-legged species. It should, perhaps, be added that the varieties of the crane common in China are themselves, even for cranes, extremely fantastic, having excessively long, slender legs and a similarly long, sinuous neck. The configuration of these birds discourages their representation in certain media, as, for example, ceramics or stone. They are an ideal subject for works in bronze. A fine example of bronze crane-figures is depicted in the previously-mentioned volume, Chinese Art, by Lubor Hajek. Here every amusing feature of the birds themselves is represented with artful exaggeration. Each is resting on one foot. The immense feet are meticulously molded. One bird lifts its head high in air; it is clearly emitting its shrill, unearthly cry. The other peers into the rich mud on which the two are standing, its bill as yet closed but the entire spirit of the bird bent on extracting some delectable bit of half-hidden food beside their feet. The pair is clearly a masterpiece of the bronze-caster’s art. It is also both fantastic and amusing.

In some respects the shrike as a humorous figure surpasses even the crane, though it is less of a water-bird, and waterfowl are, by and large, well known to be more eccentric than land birds. The shrike is a plebeian, coarse in appearance and still coarser in voice. It has none of the quiet and infinitely patient deportment of the crane, which has aided in giving the latter its reputation for wisdom and meditation. But it, too, is long-billed, long-legged, and of a strangely eerie appearance. It is also the supreme satirist. Not unnaturally, the shrike appealed to artists of the mystic cults whose members had frequently retired with anger from a degenerate world. Hence we are not surprised to find such a picture as Mu-chi’s “Shrike Perched on a Pine Tree,” now in Japan. The connotation is at once sinister and bizarre, where signs of a dark humor are undeniably present. The decayed pine suggests a disillusioned view of existence. The bird has its back morosely turned to the spectator, his head hidden sullenly beneath his wing.

The amusing distortion of bird forms appears especially in minor figures. A good instance is found in the Brundage Collection. This figure is of a swan carved in jade. It is presumed that it was worn as a head-ornament. The design is eclectic to an extreme degree. This the description by René-Yvon d’Argencé well expresses: “The bird’s body is elongated, and arched to the point where one of the tail feathers rests on the flattened crest. Facial features and wing feathers are incised in a fairly realistic manner, but the movement of the large, curving tail feathers is emphasized by purely calligraphic lines. The legs, tucked up against the body, are rendered in relief.”⁶ As in so much Chinese art, the very incongruity in the relationships between realistic and artificial features becomes in itself a cause of amusement. The figure both is and is not a swan. A discerning eye is sure to be entertained. The sheer ingenuity of the thing is humorous.

Two bird species that purely as birds and irrespective of their appearance in art traditionally carry a humorous connotation are the magpie and the mynah, almost equally eccentric in appearance and behavior. Both are celebrated for their vocal proficiency. The sensitive Chinese painters commencing with the popular view developed it with skill and emphasis found only in their own works. Nature and folklore provided clues followed with peculiar relish. Since the two species are communicative, not surprisingly they led to pictures of their intercourse and interrelationships. These frequently have a comic flavor. Thus in the National Museum in Taiwan is a screen-picture of a pair of noisy magpies chattering angrily at a sufficiently innocuous looking rabbit. Their mouths are wide open; the wings of both are spread to indicate high agitation. Were the figures here translated into humans, the picture would be a lively “conversation piece.”

The highly humorous, eccentric Chu Ta (his very name suggests the chatter of birds) has given us a pair of hanging scrolls entitled “Mynah Birds and Rocks.” These birds are equally awkward and disparate. As James Cahill in Fantastics and Eccentrics in Chinese Painting observes: “A pair of mynah birds perch on a tipsy boulder, beneath a threateningly overhanging bank. . . . The other composition is just as unstable. One of the birds in each picture balances tensely on a single leg, and peers intently upwards, while the other is withdrawn and self-contained.”⁷ This is the eccentricity of wry humor, where humor’s incongruity is at its height, though the temper is much more dark than bright, far more sinister than gay. Every feature of each bird is bizarre and their relation to each other unresolved. Brush strokes are equally capricious and effective. The artist himself is known to history as a mad humorist. He is scarcely less a humorist for being ill-humored or in any case affecting ill humor. Tragic he is not. Cahill is of the opinion that his harsh comments turn inward.⁸ Conceding this to be the case, the spirit of these introspective pictures would be more humorous than satiric. Sophisticated Chinese humor has its shadows as well as its highlights.

Other birds celebrated for humorous and vocal attainments include the parrots, with their many varieties. These naturally have strong appeal for the artists. Sometimes the image is to all appearances wholly serious, as in the highly academic bird-painting of the Emperor Hui Tsung. But then, the parrot himself both looks and behaves academically, as humorists the world over have from time to time observed. Other representations of parrots, especially in three dimensions, frankly sustain the familiar image of this bird as an actor in the universal comedy. By and large, it is indisputably true that the makers of figurines, who were common craftsmen, took themselves and their works less seriously than the painters, most of whom were scholars and many high in the ranks of the aristocracy. Presumably all persons acquainted with the Chinese arts are familiar with the amusing parrots and parrakeets so often encountered in porcelain. To be specific in this matter, a pair may be mentioned attractively illustrated in H. F. E. Visser’s comprehensive volume (plate 96). These are irritable chatterers with beaks out of all proportion to their diminutive bodies. But they are clearly more of a nuisance than a menace. They are anything but birds of prey. Their shrill colors and eccentric forms can only in the end contribute to the gaiety and relaxation of all who hear and see them imaginatively. Although minor objects in comparison with many figures discussed in these pages, they, too, play their part in the comprehensive and catholic world of Chinese humor. They are as light as Chu Ta’s mynah birds are dark. One complements the other. Humor’s house has many chambers.

In this respect it may further be noted that the tactile values of Chinese figures have a meaning that enhances their humorous effect. Since objects on public exhibition are not to be touched, such matters need not be referred to public collections. Insofar as I am aware, writers on art seldom comment on the weight or even the texture of an object. Among my own small collection is, on the one hand, for example, a monster humorously terrific, rough in surface, very small, but of metals enormously heavy. It vaguely resembles a rhinoceros though I prefer to regard it as a spectre in a dream. The image has a ponderous meaning; it also has a literal ponderosity truly amazing in proportion to its size. On the other hand are decorative objects in porcelain gracefully humorous, surprisingly light in weight, bland and smooth to the touch. Even a blind man might perceive the humorous connotations of Chinese art.

Finally, as for the humorous representation of the human image itself, the story is far too long even to be summarized here. However, being at home among the birds and animals, man at least merits a paragraph. The paintings of drunken monks or of the religious performing deliberately absurd actions are extremely familiar. The Chinese genius in drawing grotesque figures from all classes in society is at once apparent. Chinese classical artists are the foremost of cartoonists. What caricatures are to be seen in the anonymous scroll, “Yang P’u Moving His Family,” in the Art Institute of Chicago! What an amazingly sophisticated image is Lo P’ing’s “Portrait of the Artist’s Friend I-an,” from the Ching Yüan Chai Collection! There are delectable images of scholars rejoicing in their ease; of village peddlers, of common servants, of playful children. The figures on the famous Han tiles in the Boston Museum of Fine Art are among the most perfect of all images of sophisticated and supercilious aristocrats. Liang K’ai ranks among the world’s greatest humorists, his imaginary portrait-sketch of Li Po being his masterpiece. As observed in the early pages of this chapter, humor is deep-seated in the heart of ancient China, resting on profound and philosophical foundations. Blessed were the scholars who smiled, for they were good Confucians and were comfortable. Blessed were the sages who laughed, for they were good Taoists and comprehended the universe.