When I asked why all of the stelae – huge stone slabs carved with commemorative texts – are mounted on the backs of turtles, a look of horror flashed on the guide’s face. “They’re not turtles, they’re bixi – the sixth child of the dragon”. He led me around the bixi, and pointed out that it has the head of a dragon, the shell of a turtle, and the tail of snake. A bixi can only carry the emperor on its back – or, in this case, the stele of the emperor – while a turtle can carry anyone. He drew the character for bixi on the ground: 赑屃, two characters that are filled with the word 贝, meaning shell. Regal, linguistically interesting, and cute – bixi now ranks with dragon and phoenix at the top of my list of favourite mythical animals.
A 赑屃 rears its cute head
What you have in this picture seems to be a wonderful example of a Ming era bixi – definitely acquiring dragon characteristics. (The process which went a lot further by the mid-Qing).
However, the earliest well-preserved ancestors of the Ming bixi – the turtles of the Liang Dynasty (ca. 500 AD), some of which are still carrying their stelae – are rather naturalistic aquatic turtles. Even in the Song they weren’t as “dragon-like” as the Ming generation.
Interesting — thanks for sharing!
After I wrote my note, I kept thinking: “I must have seen this face somewhere already!”. And indeed I have: this is the bixi with a stele dated Year 4 of the Chenghua era (1468 AD) from the Temple in Confucius in Qufu, commemorating the renovation of the said temple.
So you must have seen all twenty-odd bixi residing in this temple, from the
antediluvian-looking Song and Jin creations to the almost baroque dragon turtles of the mid-Qing
Qufu, of course, is perhaps the best place in the world to see this genre of sculpture, with perhaps 40-50 bixi of all sizes all told, between the city’s temples, the Confucius Cemetery, and Shou Qiu.