Xīnnián kuàilè !
It is Chinese New Year’s Eve and, although it is icy cold outside, and we daren’t switch our heating on for too long, there is warmth and shiny red silkiness in my thoughts. Silkiness and silliness, of course.
So far, on this website, I have mostly written about WATER, and every day there are more stories about the lack of it, the state of it, flooding, drinkability, local and worldwide. Are the UK seas killing or shellfish? Whether through dredging or some new seaborne virus, it would certainly appear so. I like a dressed crab, but I don’t want it dressed in poisons… Oh dear!
I started to write about water because of the discovery of a Tudor survey showing new water sources for the entertaining Clerkenwell area, including the ‘Skinners Well’, the site of Royal Medieval festivals of entertainment, on a piece of land where the Red Bull Playhouse came to be built later. The academic announcement article about this is now published.
But there is much else to say, and I’m saying it. Because the Well was called the ‘Skinners’ well, the trade of London’s Skinners comes into view as a research way forward, and a vibrant and expansive trade it looks to be. The Skinners were basically furriers – engaged with keeping Londoners warm, with the capturing, treating and trading of the soft, the strong and the warming. The fur trade has been frowned upon for a long time now in animal-loving places. Yet we wear what looks like what it isn’t (fake), forgetting that the real historically kept us warm when all else was bound to fail.
What I have learned from Elspeth Veale’s English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages is that in the UK we would wear any furry skin we could lay our hands on. If we were the right class we could wear ermine, else squirrel, for example, and even cat was used to keep us purry-warm.
This year is The Year of the Rabbit. I was born in 1963 so, indeed, this year is my year.
Rabbits symbolise, I learn, “grace, beauty, mercy and good luck”. Trala! They are also linked to the moon, “because of the mythical Jade Rabbit who lives there”. I was born under a full moon. “Oh swear not by the moon” writes Shakespeare. “th’ inconstant moon that nightly changes her circled orb, | Lest that thy love prove likewise variable!”
I go on to read that due to a 60-year system associated with the elements, this is also the year of the WATER Rabbit. The last Water Rabbit year was – guess when – 1963. I’m a drenched Rabbit. People born in Water years are said to be “creative, sensitive and reflective.” Me all over, I swear.
Yes, we wore rabbit too. Indeed, some of us still do! There are several current N. American websites describing how to treat and use rabbit skins, showing pics of jolly men in the snow with ears warmed by soft furry bunny hats. As someone who suffers from the cold and have done all my life, I can’t begrudge them the joy of warmth, especially when they haven’t raised the animals for meat alone – they have used all parts of it, throwing nothing away in our throwaway age.
In history, we don’t associate China with rabbit skins, not if we have “creative, sensitive and reflective” souls. We think of silk,
and red shiny soft fabrics,
embroidered with flowers and dragons… Or.. . Rabbits…
Of delicately flavoured teas and noodles. And ladies with kindly laughing smiles. So that decided me. Today (now being Chinese New Year’s Day), I visited Chinatown, to jostle with the throng taking pics, being a lucky rabbit.
Last night, outside, my ears were warmed by the sound of fireworks, another emblem in common with the Red Bull’s antics. These bangs and whizzes are not used for startling stage effects today, however, but for ushering in a kind and positive lunisolar year. My year.
And everyone else’s, I hope.
(Pic: Queen Elizabeth I, outside the National Portrait Gallery. Wearing ermine and silk.)