Lipad, Pegaraw
From now until Feb. 17, which is the Lunar Chinese New Year, expect to find more and more artwork, home décor, and apparel (mainly T-shirts) showing horses.
All to welcome the Year of the Horse on the lunar Chinese calendar, the horse being one of 12 zodiac animals that gives each year particular attributes, including what to expect in terms of “good” years and other attributes not quite as “lucky.”
Older people of Chinese ancestry take these zodiac signs seriously, with books and fortune tellers that guide them on what to look out for in business, travel, and relationships. Older Chinese take all this quite seriously, even memorizing the sequence of the zodiac animals and what to expect from year to year. Younger ones don’t take them as seriously, except perhaps regarding the prospects for romantic relationships. (And yes, the “hungry ghosts” during the eighth lunar month, a kind of Chinese Halloween.)
The “veterinary” zodiac and its interpretations should be seen more as pragmatic guides. Each new year brings new anxieties. The animals in the zodiac help to anchor us. For example, this coming Year of the Horse reflects our hopes amid increasing turbulence in the world. With all the corruption around us, mind you, including the United States, which makes our corruption look small-time, the horse can only symbolize our hopes that the problems can be resolved with greater speed. At the same time, we know horses can overspeed, which can be dangerous, too. Extend that into our hopes around business, school work, romance, and you can see how even a small horse figurine could be a useful reminder to ride out the times.
Like Western horoscopes, the advice in Chinese almanacs and readings is down-to-earth and practical, couched in language general enough so you can claim the horoscope was on the nose and offering tools. The Chinese look at fate as something that can be “fixed” with amulets, mantras, and changing the placements of the house, furniture … even of people (breaking off, for example, with that increasingly unromantic partner).
Just last December, I realized, through posts on the internet, how much variation there is with the veterinary zodiac. Cats are not found in the animal zodiac of the Chinese, but are important in Vietnam’s. Whales are not one of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs, but the sheer size of whales undoubtedly impressed people. I found one Chinese expression that talks about riding whales to catch the moon!
I also discovered that back in 2002, a film, ”Riding the Whale,” was produced in New Zealand, taking off from a book with the same title by Witi Ihimaera. In folklore, the Maori say that their ancestors rode whales to migrate to what is now New Zealand.
The whale-riding film starts with the birth of twins and the death of the boy twin. The girl, Kahu, survives but has a great-grandfather, a traditionalist, who is disappointed and cold, because in Maori culture, the eldest of grandchildren (which the twins were) was presumed to be eligible to become a community leader. The great-grandfather just isn’t convinced that a girl would make the grade. Kahu struggles with and overcomes gender discrimination because of a serious crisis involving whales, which come to the rescue, with the girl taking the lead.
Now, why shouldn’t we have our own animal zodiac converted into practical stories? Over the weekend, I suddenly remembered Pegaraw, a sculpture by Napoleon Abueva. Pegaraw greets visitors at the entrance of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. It’s an imposing sculpture depicting a winged tamaraw, its name taken from Pegasus, the Greek winged horse, and tamaraw, ready to fly off into the sky. It is said that Abueva produced the sculpture to represent our race into the 21st century.
Why not use more of our folklore, about our animals in particular, for public education about our environment and our fellow animal species, and the times and the challenges we live with?
Let me acknowledge Deo Nazario Catingub, who, as a prelaw student several years ago, posted the story behind Pegaraw on the web as an assignment in Humanities. Several years later, he finished law school, and I thought his post was timely, coming shortly after the latest batch of Filipino whale riders had just passed their bar exams.
Might 2026 be a good year for whales—and whale-riding!
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
