Tik-Tok of Oz
part 1
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Tititi-hoochoo Tititi-hoochoo the great jinjin is a Chinese
riddle pun. The best reference I know of for this is
chapter 7 of "Proverbs and Common Sayings from the Chinese" by Arthur
Smith. It was originally published in the 1800s sometime after 1885. It was
republished in 1914 with 50 pages added. Dover reprinted it in 1965 in a
paperback version. It can be found in Bookfinder for about $10 or so. I
thoroughly recommend it if you're at all interested in some of the weirdest
word play in the world. That said.. Chinese characters are formed in various ways.
One way is by reduplication. The character formed of one tree means wood. The
character formed of two trees means grove. The character formed of three trees
means forest. As a sort of rebus type thing, three of any character means a
humungous of whatever the character is. In this case, tititi would be a "vast
ti". The word for vast is "huang". Thus this reads as
"huang ti" which puns with "huang ti" which means emperor. Hoochoo is a cleverer pun yet. Hoo means tiger. The
tiger is noted for having the character for "king" on its forehead.
That is, three horizontal stripes stacked vertically, crossed through the middle
by one vertical stripe. Choo means pearl. Besides being known as "jade of
the sea" it also means "dot" because of its dot-like shape. Put
the two together and you have the character for king combined with a dot, and
that makes the character for jade. Reading from right to left, that
makes "Jade emperor" which is the title of the ruler of the fairies.
Who is also known as the "Private person" and "the Lonely
One". Jin means fairy spirit and reduplicated means
"Ruler of the fairies". The
description of the fairy kings and queens
of the various natural functions of the world is extremely reminiscent
of the
fairy court as described in chapter 5 of "Journey to the West",
especially the varicolored skin, as perhaps you know that jade comes in
about
as many colors as there are, though green is the most common. If you've
never
read that, I thoroughly recommend the abbreviated translation by Waley
called
"Monkey". It's a hoot. The book called "Deification of the Gods" is not
as much fun, but it recounts the events leading to the establishment of
the fairy court at the end of the Shang Dynasty. Numerous dead people
were promoted to fairy-hood and put in charge of the world's natural
functions which up to that time were acting in a
chaotic, unregulated and well, natural fashion. |