Does this mistake suggest a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the people who named it? Were they of the opinion that those birds from afar are somehow better than down-home wild ducks?
Mt. Heng in Hunan Province on the mainland has a Huiyan ("returning geese") peak, so named because the ancient Chinese observed that wild geese heading south in fall would go no farther than Hunan's Mt. Heng. While migratory birds do follow set paths on their journeys between north and south every year, they want to end up in safe and suitable locations. Every year climatic differences and other factors will vary the "final destinations" north and south, but Huiyan Peak was not named without reason.
Large birds can withstand cold and hunger better than small birds. Yet, if they can handle the cold northern winter, why must they make an arduous migration south? And in fact, their southern range has shrunk.
While ducks and geese are members of the same family of birds, their coloring and shapes are quite different. Generally speaking, geese are larger than ducks-some geese weigh as much as two ducks-so their range extends farther north. There are five or six species of geese with migration routes that sometimes take them through Taiwan, but all of these are rare visitors that usually don't come at all. After cold fronts pass through, however, bird associations are always telling bird watchers to rush off to the seashore and mouths of rivers. If their luck is good, they may be able to see wild geese blown off course by the rough weather.
Red-footed honkers
Domesticated ducks are descended from wild ducks, and wild geese are the ancestors of domesticated geese. The Chinese have called these white geese (which can't fly) "stranded geese." The body shapes of domesticated ducks and geese reflect to a large degree those of their ancestors.
When Feng Zikai, who advocates protection for all living beings, fondly recalls one big white goose that someone once gave him to take care of, he can't help but make some comparisons that poke fun at ducks. He notes that the quacks of ducks have a happy, silly tone to them, whereas the honks of geese are rather grand and solemn. Ducks waddle with short, quick steps that make them look like nervous fidgeters. Geese on the other hand take big steps that give them an elegant, unhurried deportment.
Geese have longer necks than ducks, with giraffe-like upper bodies, which gives them a more elegant appearance. The long neck makes the call of geese deeper and more sonorous. To the ears of geese lovers, they sound very different! The expression "the ugly duckling becomes a swan" sums up how some people feel: Geese and swans may belong to the same family as ducks, but their long necks make them far prettier.
In real life, the much-mocked ugly duckling grows up only to become an ugly adult duck, a joiner of crowds that blindly charges about looking for food.
Ask the goose about love sickness
In the western suburbs of Chengdu in Sichuan Province, archeologists have unearthed a Han dynasty tile painting: Hunters and Prey. In the work, the leaves have all fallen from the trees by a pond brimming with water, where fish can be seen under the lotuses and a flock of ducks floats. Up above, geese are flying in formation, splitting the sky in two. It's the height of the hunting season, and two hunters, one standing and one crouching, are holding their bows up as they track the flight of the geese.
Let's look at this from another angle: At the same time and place, ducks are leisurely floating, while geese are fleeing for their lives. Can it be that of the two birds only the geese are considered worthy targets for heroes' arrows? Great hunters are often depicted aiming their arrows at geese, but how often do you hear a description of some legendary hunter killing a duck?
In China, the special characteristics of geese have fostered descriptions of their four virtues: trustworthiness, respect for proper decorum, constancy and wisdom. Every year wild geese make their journeys at the same time, so they are reliable. Their ordered flight formations show that they follow rules of proper decorum. Their commitment to a single spouse displays their constancy. And known to cover themselves with reeds and grasses to elude hunters, their IQs have got to be pretty high.
"I ask the world, what is love, for which we put our lives in other's hands?" The story goes that Yuan Haowen, the Jin-dynasty author of this famous line of verse, was on his way to take a civil service exam when he encountered a hunter of geese. The hunter told Yuan that he had trapped a goose that day; its spouse, upon seeing that its love was hopelessly ensnared, killed itself by diving straight into the ground. Modern zoologists, however, have discovered that although geese show great love and affection for their mates, cheating and love triangles are far from unknown. For geese too, love and romance are complicated matters.
Preferring to attach themselves to large groups, wild ducks take to flight in much greater flocks, and their flight formations are rather disorderly. Geese tend to travel in small groups, often families, and places in the formation are based on age. Modern biologists have found that the leading bird is often the father or grandfather. Because geese and ducks do not soar on air currents as birds of prey do, they encounter air resistance as they flap their wings up and down. They cut down on this resistance and save energy by lining up behind other birds in their upside-down V formations-which are likened by Chinese to the character for man. In the eyes of surface-bound humans, wild geese have a "deep understanding of man" and as such are even more highly esteemed.
The way that geese and ducks are treated in traditional Chinese songs suggest the opinions that Chinese have held about their characters. In the percussion song "Ducks Paddle Through the Water" the light beating of the drums suggests the swaying of ducklings. Funny and festive, it's a great introduction to traditional Chinese music for youngsters.
The song "A Flat Stretch of Sand Where Geese Land," which is rooted deeply in the cultural tradition, is a reflection of the profound feelings of the literati. According the ethnomusicologist Lin Ku-fang, its composer wrote on an 1876 score, "I am trying to describe the sight of geese flying over a flat stretch of sand on a cool, windless fall day, their calls descending from high above the clouds, where they are flying near the upper limit of the sky. I want to use the geese's willingness to make this great journey to convey the broadmindedness of the hermit literati."
Lin Ku-fang explains that this song is actually "using the peaceful sands and slowly falling geese to convey the tender sentiments and regrets of those literati who realize that they can't 'mend Heaven' and 'save the world' and so withdraw from the affairs of man."
A solitary bird amid the reeds
Stirring these feelings of regret in literati, the honk of the geese has an earth-shaking, soul-stirring power. In The Book of Songs, it is described as having a tragic sound, like the cries of people who have wandered far from home and become lost. This is the origins of the expression, "ai hong bian ye" (lit. "sorrowful geese throughout the wilderness"), which means, "the land is filled with suffering people."
"On a cold fall night, plaintive calls echo over a river sand bar and the intertwined reeds and hibiscus by the banks," an ancient wrote of a painting. "A flock of geese are bedded down. A lone male goose stands guard, calling to the moon. How does such a scene manage to stir so many varied emotions?" You can almost place yourself at the scene, hearing the honks of the geese carry across the land enveloped by the dark cage of night, their silhouettes traversing the sky, pricking unlimited feelings of regret.
In the Chinese opera Silang Visits his Mother, Yang Silang makes this self-description, "I am a lot like a goose that has flown from the south and lost its flock." When Wu Zixu, a military strategist who lived during the Spring and Autumn period, crosses the Zhao Pass bitter over the murder of his father, the plaintive cries of the geese make his pain only that much sharper. A story that gives geese a "happier" image, is also a tale of exile (19 years of it): Su Wu, a Han dynasty official, tended sheep by the northern seas until geese brought a message that he could return.
In 1889, the American Frank M. Chapman wrote something in a bird magazine to this effect: "Everyone has a bird in their heart. When it touches your spirit, it starts a longing for nature." In China, how do you explain the relationship between geese and people? You probably have to go back to the relationship that Chinese have with nature. In the long river of history, dynasties rise only to fall, and war and chaos reappear again and again. Confronted with these long periods of turmoil, people have been periodically forced to abandon civilization for the wilds. After the period of trouble passes, every household gets busy planting flowers and grass and taking outings to the countryside in their leisure time, so that the strife of the human world seems even more ridiculous. The Chinese view of man and nature is not that man is man and nature is nature, but rather, as Lin Ku-fang puts it, that "the vast land, with its mountains and rivers, is bound up with the world of man, so that they have deep feelings for each other and cannot be separated."
Why make so much of their differences?
Because of this bond between man and goose, when the wild duck reserve on the banks of the Tanshui River was being expanded and thus needed a new name, in the collective wisdom of the public, the government and bird association experts, it was decided to give all glory to geese, and-despite the park's thriving duck population-rename it the "Wild Goose Reserve."
The truth is that Chinese feel about geese and ducks as they do about apples and oranges: Each have their own fans. Wang Xizhi loved geese and spent a great sum to buy a goose. But in the Ming dynasty Qiu Ying asserted that he wouldn't sell the mallard in the painting Duck by a River for 1000 ounces of gold.
Everything in this world has its own nature. Zhuangzi said, "The duck's legs may be short, but if you added to their length the duck wouldn't be happy. The goose's neck may be long, but its pain upon breaking is just as great. True, the duck's legs are short, but if you gave it artificial limbs, the poor bird wouldn't know how to walk."
The book Xiqing Xujian advises lovers of drink to go see how wild ducks are able to enter the water without drowning. From this sight, they may come to the realization that with good sense they needn't worry about committing immoral acts when drunk. Hence, China has a long tradition of drinking mugs in the shape of ducks.
Cheng Pan-chiao says when flocks of birds-any birds-can find peace in the world by adapting themselves to the circumstances of the day (say, using rivers as their ponds), it should be a source of joy to man.
In Taiwan these days people spend a lot of time stressing "the native soil." But it didn't stop them from naming a riverside reserve, where flocks of native wild ducks thrive, after their cousins the geese, which rarely cross the strait from the mainland. But as the birds boldly take to flight, so free from concerns, what does it matter if they are ducks or geese?
p.102
Do geese choose to fly in tight formations so as to reduce wind resistance? For the more sentimentally inclined, it naturally isn't that simple.
p.104
In subtropical Taiwan, you rarely get a chance to see geese. So when these five bean geese appeared in Kuandu several years ago, photographers jumped at the chance to take their picture.
p.105
Next to ducks at the water's edge, this "target" that has dropped from the sky looks ridiculously large. Not a goose, it's one of the largest members of the Anatidae family: a swan. (photo by Chien Yu-hsin)
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
