Talk:Chinese mythology

Xing Tian

Is there anything about turtles?

It's turtles all the way down. — LlywelynII 01:05, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Classification of "deities"

Dividing "deities" into Daoist and Buddhist is not suitable for an article about mythology. Certainly, this is not the case in for reliable reference literature which I have consulted. The Daoist-Buddhist religious dichotomy is not particularly helpful, especially in an article about mythology. The resulting division of entries ended up more erroneous than correct. Similarly "mythological beings or people" suits this article better than "deities", which is a religious concept that does not suit the subject of Chinese mythology very well. The people and beings in mythology may also be deities from the perspective of religion, but generally in mythology lacks clear distinctions between the profane and the divine, or the actual versus the imaginary. Thus we get talking animals, humans with magical powers, heavenly beings with weaknesses and vulnerabilities, wizards that become immortal, and all kinds of hard-to-classify people and beings. Certainly, attempting to classify them into deities and non-deities and as Daoist and Buddhist does not work, as can be seen in the awkward stages shown in the history of this article. Dcattell (talk) 15:44, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Seems like pretty whingy orientalizing or No True Scotsman. The magic sky people who help with the crops are gods/deities, which is a religious concept just as deeply at home in China as everywhere else humans have gotten themselves off to. There's no problem with realizing Greek myths were about heroes and gods and, while the Chinese didn't follow all the Greek ideas about hero veneration (of course), Chinese myths are similarly about heroes and gods and don't need as much handwringing as you're doing to grok them.

It's not that Chinese myth is sui generis. It's just incredibly messy, poorly documented and translated in many places, and mishandled by many (as demonstrated in your message) who are perfectly at home dealing with Confucian legends and Shangdi worship but feel icky when philosophical Laozi gets appropriated as religious Laojun in 150 different ways over 2500 years of complicated development. It's not all the West's fault, of course: the scholar class loved trying to rationalize religious beliefs and were constantly looking over the peasants' shoulders to make sure they weren't worshipping the 'wrong way'. — LlywelynII 00:30, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding Category Tree

I find the use of the Category Tree in this article very useful both as a Wikipedia User and editor. Please discuss here before deleting the presence of this feature in this article. Chinese Mythology has been difficult in terms of organizing the subject space on Wikipedia. Much work remains to be done, and the Category Tree is both a most useful aid and seems to cause no harm. Dcattell (talk) 01:01, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

@Dcattell: This is currently the only Wikipedia article using <categorytree>. (See this search to check current status.) The other 5.8 million articles, whether about difficult-to-organize subjects or not, all have simple links into the category system at the bottom of the page, showing which categories the specific article being viewed has been classified into. The two ways of doing it are redundant, and having redundant navigation elements makes the page harder to use by cluttering it. If readers want to navigate the category tree, we expect them to click into the category system from the bottom-of-the-page link, where they should be looking for it if they are familiar with Wikipedia's navigational conventions. -- Beland (talk) 19:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure who the "we" is in "we expect". Am I being excluded from the group of people with expectations? I have used the tree system in articles before, for example in the area of Chinese poetry. I was not aware that tree system has been deprecated and systematically removed from articles. Frankly, the category system in regards to Chinese poetry is a big mess. And I find the tree system easier to deal with (but maybe I'm old fashioned). There seems to be a movement to move edit-related material to the talk pages (per "This is the talk page for discussing improvements...", and I certainly support that -- especially when it come to multiple scare tags with editorial suggestions that article users are immediately subjected to before any encyclopedic content appears (talking about clutter!). If I am the only one in the Wikipedia universe that benefits from trees, then it is perfectly reasonable that we move the category tree code to the talk page instead, for easy access to humble, hard-working editors? Maybe category trees would be more popular if they were not being removed? Or, how 'bout this? We move the cat tree down to the bottom of the article, then it could not possibly be considered to be "cluttering up" the article? Generally I don't support putting category trees in articles, but it makes a certain amount of sense for certain more top-level articles such as "Chinese mythology", plus its easily accessible in the article, rather than having to navigate to a separate Category page, and then to various subpages (plus the Portal system isn't really a substitute). Instead, with an embedded tree it is all right there in-page! Scroll up and down, compare the tree structure to the article content, and so on (try it! --unfortunately it's a very bad structural mismatch in "Chinese mythology", and that's what really needs to be fixed, one way or the other). Actually, much in the encyclopedic area of Chinese mythology needs to be fixed, and that is where energy should be directed. Dcattell (talk) 01:03, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

@Dcattell: By "we" I mean the Wikipedia editors who agree with the consensus of how categories are applied to articles. The clickable category trees are indeed useful, but a better version is available on the category page. If you click the link at the bottom of the page to Category:Chinese mythology, you'll see that you can click on triangles next to subcategories to expand them, if you wish. But what this page has that the categorytree in the article doesn't have, is all the articles in Category:Chinese mythology itself. It seems like that represents a much better reader experience. I wouldn't want readers to stop looking for categories when they see the categorytree and get a worse experience by not clicking through to the category page - that's why I'd see the categorytree as clutter. Since both the catgegory page and the talk page are one click away from the article, it doesn't make much sense to me to put a copy of the category tree on the talk page. -- Beland (talk) 16:56, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Chinese creation myth

As we all know the chinese has a symbol the dragon, but i have a question why dragon why not a god or godess? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.224.14.89 (talk) 20:39, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

The more powerful dragons were gods, when they weren't just considered How the World Is. If you mean, why weren't all the Chinese gods human-looking? then the answer is that it's all make-believe and some people/societies are more creative than others. — LlywelynII 00:21, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion

• Brown, Tristan G. (5 March 2015), "Feasts of the Sacrifice: Ritual Slaughter in Late Imperial and 20th-Century China", All about China, Washington: Middle East Institute.

This is a fascinating account of how Eid al-Adha rituals led to Muslims/Hui becoming the usual butchers in western China not only for the imperial elite but also for mandatory state sacrifices to the Chinese gods (considered to be meat-eaters if not carnivores) and suspect Commies during the paranoid Nationalist era (since killing cattle could only be a plot to reduce agricultural output and undermine the state). It should probably be introduced here, as well as at religion in China, Chinese cuisine, and similar pages. — LlywelynII 00:20, 26 December 2022 (UTC)