First of all, briefly introduce the riddle:
Because Yannan's return means that spring is here, the weather is warm, and swallows return to the north from the south. In the zodiac, only snakes are cold-blooded, because their body temperature changes with the humidity of the external environment and they need to hibernate in winter.
When spring comes and the weather is mild, when swallows fly back to the north, snakes will wake up from hibernation and start foraging and other activities. So Yan Nan explained that the zodiac is a snake.
Second, the zodiac snake introduction:
Four-year-old people are snakes, most of them are dragons in the north, and some are worms. People call the snake a dragon because the image of the dragon was born out of the snake at first, not because some people say that calling the snake a dragon is to climb the dragon and attach the phoenix.
There is a saying among the Han people that it is unlucky to see a snake skinned. People say that snakes shed their skin and will not shed it until they die, especially in spring.
People think that if a snake is killed or not, it will take action, which is not good for the family. Therefore, if a snake is found at home, it will be caught in a jar or picked on a long pole, and then sent to the valley, begging it to hide in a cave and not to return to others.
Third, knowledge expansion:
The Zodiac, also known as the Zodiac, is twelve kinds of animals in China that match the twelve earthly branches according to the year of birth, including rats, cows, tigers, rabbits, dragons, snakes, horses, sheep, monkeys, chickens, dogs and pigs.
The origin of the zodiac is related to animal worship. According to the Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Shuihudi, Hubei Province and Fangmatan, Tianshui, Gansu Province, there was a relatively complete zodiac system in the pre-Qin period, and the earliest recorded document that was the same as the modern zodiac was Lun Heng written by Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
As a long-standing symbol of folk culture, the zodiac has left a lot of poems, Spring Festival couplets, paintings, calligraphy and paintings and folk arts and crafts that depict the image and symbolic meaning of the zodiac.
Apart from China, many countries in the world issue stamps of the zodiac during the Spring Festival to express their wishes for the New Year in China. The skater in the shape of the zodiac also appeared at the closing ceremony of the 24th Winter Olympic Games in Beijing in 2022.