揚眉"兔"氣 (Animal)

I don’t remember since when, but before or during the Chinese Lunar New Year, we’ll be bombarded with animal-related “lucky phrases” on TV or radio commercials. Take these days for example, I’ve heard the phrase揚眉”兔”氣(yang2 mei2 tu4 qi4) a couple of times.

Chinese use 12 animals to represent each year alternately. We call these 十二生肖* (sh2 er4 sheng xiao4), 12 animal signs of the Chinese astrology. If a person was born in lunar year 2010, a year of tiger, for example, his 生肖(sheng xiao4) would be tiger. Or we’ll say 他屬虎 (ta shu3 hu3).

The lunar year 2011 is the year of rabbit, 兔(tu4)  The lucky phrase mentioned in the title goes actually as "揚眉吐氣" (yang2 mei2 tu3 qi4), which is used to describe how people show their triumph after a long period of bad time or failure by raising their eyebrows and exhale their melancholy. (Attention, here “raising eyebrows” doesn’t mean getting surprised or showing disapproval as used in English.) As the word “吐” (tu3) sounds similar to”兔”(tu4), again we’re using the semi-homophone to play this word game we always do.

Like many other animals, the rabbit is used a lot in the Chinese idioms. The first one flashing into my mind is 狡兔三窟 (jiao3 tu4 san ku), where the rabbit is used as a symbol of sly people who have more than one hiding places to avoid getting caught, now mostly referring to gangsters or hoodlums.

When rabbits, prey to the hunter, die out, what happens to the hunting dog? It gets cooked! That’s what the idiom 兔死狗烹 (tu4 s3 gou3 peng) means. What about the fox? How does he feel when the rabbit is hunted and killed? --He moans and worries, for he shares the same feeling and fate being a prey himself. That’s why we say 兔死狐悲 (tu4 s3 hu2 bei)

Besides being sly or prey, what’s more about the rabbit? –They escape fast. So when a suspect or prisoner escapes from the police, we can say he 兔脱 (tu3 tuo) from the police.

Being a snake myself, I’ve been racking my brains but still can’t come up with any snake-related lucky phrase. Guess I’ll have to wait for another 2 years for the year of snake to come.

*十二生肖(sh2 er4 sheng xiao4): 鼠(shu3) rat、牛(niu2) ox、虎(hu3) tiger、兔(tu4) rabbit、龍(=龙)(long2) dragon、蛇(she2) snake 、馬(=马) (ma3) horse、羊(yang2) goat、猴(hou2) monkey、雞(=鸡) (ji) rooster、狗(gou3) dog 、猪(zhu) pig

揚眉吐氣 = 扬眉吐气 (simplified)