Speaking of mermaids, what is your first impression?
In the fairy tale, "The Daughter of the Sea", the little mermaid turns into a bubble for love and successfully obtains a complete soul.
In most film and television works, the image of the mermaid is half-human and half-fish, and the appearance is super high, but in fact, do you know? Mermaids have a variety of images in Chinese mythology, and they are not only handsome and beautiful.
Imagine if the image of the mermaid is reversed, the upper body is a fish, the lower body is two legs, is it suddenly shattered?
But there really must be, in the ancient Chinese records, the image of the mermaid is really strange, and has nothing to do with beauty.
Image source network
In ancient China, people used to call them fish people.
Fish people: alias quanke, quanxian, human head fish tail, living in the deep sea, can weave a material called mackerel yarn, the tears that flow down will become pearls, from the body can be extracted from the fish oil, made into lamp oil lamp lamp can not be extinguished for thousands of years.
And this kind of long lamp was generally regarded as a treasure by the emperor and placed in the mausoleum.
There are many recorded works about the Fish People, such as "Search for God", "Taiping Imperial Records", "Naturalist" and so on.
The saying is also relatively uniform, there is not much difference, perhaps influenced by the culture of the time, the picture book in the image of the fish is ugly, and it does not only refer to women.
For example, in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Kryptonians are talking about the Fish People, only saying that they have fish tails and no legs. During this period, the fish people did not have any special abilities, but described the appearance characteristics that were different from those of people.
By the time it came to the Book of Searching Gods, there were fish people living outside the South China Sea, who could weave and tears to turn into pearls, and it was specifically explained that the fish people lived in the water, like fish.
And for a long time, the fish people are not a positive image, the temperament is not mild, the green face fangs, will eat people, the male fish has great strength, strong combat effectiveness, and even the male fish ugly, female fish beautiful saying.
The image comes from the Internet
In the "Taiping Guangji", the fish people appear more in the female image, saying that they are kind-hearted and docile, and the seaside men can't find a wife, so they go out to the sea to catch one back, raise it in the pool, make themselves wives, and in order to meet the brain holes of the majority of poor people, they also deliberately describe their looks in detail, and also deliberately point out that they do not affect life as wives.
And about how the fish people are woven, there is also a description in the "Shu Yi Zhi", saying that this kind of cloth is called dragon yarn, worth more than a hundred gold, and the clothes made can enter the water without getting wet, white like autumn frost, and even mention that the weaving of the fish people is called the Dragon Silk Palace.
Later, the fish people have completely become a positive image of kindness, gentleness, and willingness to dedicate themselves, and have become an outlier that people are more eager to meet.