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| The title screen of Kowloon's Gate with the Yin and Yang symbol |
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| The loading screen of The Kyonshi Panic with the Yin and Yang symbol |
In the real world, the martial art
Jeet Kun Do developed by Hong Kong raised Bruce Lee is one well-known application of Yin and Yang. Its emblem is indeed similar to the Taijitu symbol.
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| The Jeet Kun Do enblem |
In this martial art, firmness and gentleness are considered to be Yang and Yin respectively. In the first stage (partiality), they are not cooperating well, thereby they are separated in the emblem. It is in the second stage (fluidity) that a practitioner masters the cooperation of the two, thereby the two pieces join together. At the same time, he should realize that he should be soft yet not yielding, and firm yet not hard, thereby each portion has a seed of the other.
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| The three stages of cultivation in Jeet Kune Do |
4: The four symbols 四象 - guards in four directions
The Four Symbols refers to the four mythological creatures in the Chinese constellations. They include the Azure Dragon (青龍), the Vermilion Bird (朱雀), the White Tiger (白虎), and the Black Turtle (玄武). Each one of them represents a direction (East, South, West and North) and a season which matches the climate observed in the respective part of China (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter). Often accompanied with these four creatures is the Yellow Dragon of the Center. Dragon is a symbol of the Chinese emperor in Chinese history. The four creatures in the four directions protect the Chinese king in the center.
Whenever these four creatures appear in the Hong Kong-based video games, they are protecting something. In
Kowloon Gate, it is described that the presence of these four creatures in the virtual Hong Kong helps keep the city safe. In
Shenmue II, the player needs to use keys with these four divine creatures to open a secret room. In
The Kyonshi Panic, some weapons are named after the divine beasts: tiger for the gun and turtle for the seal tags.
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| Description of the Four mythological creatures on guarding Kowloon City in the instruction manual of Kowloon's Gate. |
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| Using keys with different divine creatures to open a locked door in Five Stars Corp of Shenmue II |
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| Hint on how to use the various keys to open a locked door in Five Stars Corp of Shenmue II |
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| Weapons named after the divine creatures in The Kynoshi Panic: tiger for the gun (top left, triggered by the circle button) and turtle for the tag (bottom right, triggered by the square button) |
In the real Hong Kong, some people think that the Vermilion Bird of the South is staying as the form of Phoenix in Lantau Peak (also known as Fung Wong Shan 鳳凰山 which literally means "Phoenix Mountain") of Lantau Island. They believe the city's good days in the past was due to the protection offered by the Bird.
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| Lantau Island, located at Southwest of Hong Kong, highlighted in red. Source: Wikipedia |
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| Wisdom Path located on Lantau Peak |
The situation was believed to be changed after Wisdom Path (心經簡林) was completed in 2005. Wisdom Path features a uphill twisted and turned path eventually reaching a small peak surrounded by 38 wooden sticks. Each stick containing verses from the centuries-old Heart Sutra which are short texts on perfect wisdom in Buddhism. The sticks are arranged in a
∞ pattern, which represents infinity.
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| Wooden sticks in Wisdom Path carved with Heart Sutra. Note that stick number 23 (front left) is intentionally blanked to represent the emptiness concept of the Heart Sutra. Source: Wikipedia |
Some people believe that the Path is indeed a Chinese supernatural setting that suppresses the Bird. They accuse that its twisted path which has a swelling at the end looks like a snake if you look at the path from some angle. They also doubt whether the ∞ pattern of the sticks is really based on the Western concept of infinity, given that the path is all about Chinese or East-Asian Heart Sutra. They would rather consider such an arrangement of sticks to be a nasty Chinese means to nail things firmly. In this particular case, it is to nail the phoenix for the snake implied by the twisted path to consume. It is also suspicious to use wood rather than stone for the Sutra. Stones are far more durable than wood. In fact, the wood sticks are reported to be seriously corroded by termites and fungus and needs replacements from time to time. One conspiracy theory is that wood is much easily sharpened than stone to sticks are regarded as effective Chinese supernatural tools to nail targets in position.
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| The twisted uphill path which ends like the head of a snake. Source: 陳雲. 《龜蛇》. 香港大靈異 (二集). p.219-226. 花千樹出版社. 2013. |
5: The Five Elements 五行 - mutual generation and overcoming
The Five Elements is a five-fold conceptual scheme involving Wood (木), Fire (火), Earth (土), Metal (金), and Water (水). Just like the Four Symbols, ancient Chinese liked to fit in items or concepts of various fields into these five elements if they find suitable, especially when the entities in the field involve mutual generation and overcoming.
Mutual generation refers to the capability of one element to generate another element, and the generation chain forms a loop: Wood is where fire can be started. Once the wood burns, they turn to ash and go back to the ground or Earth. On Earth one can find metal. Near metal mine one can often find river and hence water. Presence of water in turn promotes the growth of trees and hence wood.
Mutual overcoming refers to the demolition of one element by another element , again in a cycle: Earth's nutrient is absorbed by Wood. Metal swords can be used to cut the Wood. Fire can melt Metal. Water can put out Fire. Earth in turn absorbs Water.
The concept of five elements can be found in the virtual Hong Kong of
Kowloon Gates to categorize the demons and identify the effective ways to defeat each group of them.
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| The use of The Five Elements to classify demons and identify ways to defeat them in Kowloon's Gate. |
In the real Hong Kong, metaphysics practitioners fit it the numerous industries into the five elements according to the industries' likeness to the elements, and then describe the fortune of industries in the same element collectively. Below is one possible categorization.
- Wood: industries related to wood and plants
- Fire: industries associated with power and energy
- Earth: industries associated with land and quarrying, or others foundation industries
- Metal: industries related to metal and robots
- Water: industries related to water or involving water-like flow
8: The Eight Symbols 八卦 - supernatural power behind a collection of natural phenomena
The Eight Symbols (Bagua) first emerged to categorize natural phenomena into eight groups: Sky (天/乾), Earth (地/坤), Water (水/坎), Fire (火/離), Thunder (雷/震), Wind (風/
巽), Mountain (山/艮) and Marsh (澤/兌). These eight categories are encoded by the use of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken". Similar to The Five Elements, those facing each other represent opposites, and going clockwise, they represent a natural transition.
Later on, the eight natural phenomena are mapped with different seasons, directions, personalities and even specific areas of our lives according to similarity of the categories to the eight natural phenomena.
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| The eight elements of a Bague and their trigram representation. Source: Wikipedia |
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| A Bagua map showing one way to associate directions with specific areas of your life. Credit: Rodika Tchi via about.com. |
Again, perhaps due to people's honor and sometimes fear on these natural phenomena, and their appreciation of Bagua's capability in classifying things in many different fields, the Bagua itself is believed to possess supernatural power. In
Kowloon Magic, the Bagua symbol is blended into the title of the game.
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| Title screen of Kowloon Magic featuring a Bagua |
Bagua is thought to be able to redirect the life energy in Feng Shui when combined with a mirror to form a Bagua mirror (八卦鏡). In the virtual Hong Kong of
Kowloon's Gate, it is performing exactly this function. Another alleged function of the Bagua mirror is to identify monsters from darkness and get them away. In
The Kyonshi Panic, a Bagua mirror is used as a radar to detect monsters from darkness such as
geong-sis. The same mirror can also be found in some fortune teller shops in
Shenmue II.
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| Bagua Mirror in Kowloon's Gate |
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| A Bagua mirror at the back of a fortune teller in Shenmue II |
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| Bagar mirror used as radar in The Kynoshi Panic |
12: The Twelve Birth Likeness 十二生肖 - rotation of animals
The twelve birth likeness is a scheme that assigns an animal to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle. The animals include Rat (鼠), Ox (牛), Tiger (虎), Rabbit (兔), Dragon (龍), Snake (蛇), Horse (馬), Goat (羊), Monkey (猴), Rooster (雞), Dogs (狗) and Pigs (豬). Turning the birth years to limited kinds of animals, the scheme is thought to be helping people remember their own and others' birth year at the beginning. Later on, such a categorization, similar to the Western zodiac, made people feel that people who were born in the same years share common characters. They are also thought to have the same kind of fortunes and misfortunes throughout a year.
The Chinese characters of these animals are displayed in a big circle (though incomplete and in wrong order) in the game
Fear Effect. The full set of animals in the rotation can be found in the same game as the Jade Zodiac Statues collectibles of
Sleeping Dogs. In fact, the game is set some time close to the New Year of the Snakes in 2013.
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| Chinese characters of the 12 animals in twelve birth likeness arranged in a circle in Fear Effect |
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| The animals featured in the Twelve Chinese Zodiac, appeared as Jade Zodiac Statues in Sleeping Dogs |
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| Outdoor poster with the greeting "恭賀新禧" (Happy new year) and a snake in Sleeping Dogs |
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| The poster art for the Year of the Snake download content in Sleeping Dogs |
In real Hong Kong, metaphysics masters are most popular during
New Year time as many people are interested in knowing their fortune in the new year. You cannot help finding sessions talking about what particular things to do and avoid for people bearing the same birth likeness on TV around that time.
Conclusion
We have seen the various approaches that the ancient Chinese used to categorize items. They all started with the intention of facilitating the understanding of some complicated fields by dividing the myriad of items, observations or phenomena into few categories. As time went on, people fit in more and more fields into these models. The models thus appear to be more and more powerful that people associate these models with supernatural power.
Nonetheless, one common feature of all these Chinese classification systems is their emphasis on the interrelationship that exists among the categories: complementary (Ying Yang), cooperative (The Four Symbols), generative/transitional and repulsive (The Five Elements and The Eight Symbols) or periodical (The Twelve Birth Likeness). Nothing is isolated. We should consider not only the pieces but also the whole picture made up by the pieces. Such an holistic view is considered a valuable reminder on conventional science developed in Europe or America which tends to put too much focus on individual small pieces. In the past few centuries, there has been developments on inter-discipline studies and even introduction of holistic view into various fields such as medicine, mental health and ecosystems.
References
Capcom Database. (n.d.). Yun and Yang. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://capcom.wikia.com/wiki/Yun_and_Yang
SNK Wiki. (n.d.). Tenho. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://snk.wikia.com/wiki/Tenho
香山夕陽. (2013, March 20). 香山夕陽：何方鼠輩破褔地 敢欺仙鄉無能人 - 大紀元. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/11/4/20/n3233823.htm
謝達輝. (n.d.). 五行與職業類別對照表. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www.cdi.org.tw/8w/8w-5element.html
百度百科. (n.d.). 金生水. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://baike.baidu.com/view/3874753.htm
Tchi, R. (n.d.). How To Properly Use the Feng Shui Bagua Mirror. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://fengshui.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/baguamirror.htm
百度百科. (n.d.). 八卦镜. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%A6%E9%95%9C
Wikipedia. (2017, April 23). Chinese zodiac. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac
Sleeping Dogs Wiki. (n.d.). Jade Zodiac Statues. Retrieved April 30, 2017, from http://sleepingdogs.wikia.com/wiki/Jade_Zodiac_Statue
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