Features
Monday, 27 April 2009 09:04
Written by Urbanatomy

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The Swastika and China
Buddhist origins
The swastika was almost certainly introduced to China from India with Buddhism around 2,500 years ago as one of the 32 marks of a Buddha, and appears on an illustration of comets discovered in a tomb in Mawangdui, near Changsa, that has been dated as 2,300 years old.

Empress Wu
The swastika officially entered the Chinese language as a character in 693 AD. The only female emperor in feudal China, Wu Zetian,had become highly impressed with a group of mystic individuals, including an old nun who claimed to be a Buddha capable of predicting the future, and decreed that the swastika – which had come to mean ‘all’ or ‘eternality’ – should henceforth be regarded as a Chinese character, to be pronounced the same as 万 wàn ‘ten thousand’. The ‘psychic’ nun fell from grace just two years later – being arrested and enslaved after failing to predict a fire in the imperial palace. Wu was less taken (in) by all things mystic after the incident, but the swastika character stayed.

Click here to read on... The Swastika and China
Buddhist origins
The swastika was almost certainly introduced to China from India with Buddhism around 2,500 years ago as one of the 32 marks of a Buddha, and appears on an illustration of comets discovered in a tomb in Mawangdui, near Changsa, that has been dated as 2,300 years old.

Empress Wu
The swastika officially entered the Chinese language as a character in 693 AD. The only female emperor in feudal China, Wu Zetian,had become highly impressed with a group of mystic individuals, including an old nun who claimed to be a Buddha capable of predicting the future, and decreed that the swastika – which had come to mean ‘all’ or ‘eternality’ – should henceforth be regarded as a Chinese character, to be pronounced the same as 万 wàn ‘ten thousand’. The ‘psychic’ nun fell from grace just two years later – being arrested and enslaved after failing to predict a fire in the imperial palace. Wu was less taken (in) by all things mystic after the incident, but the swastika character stayed.

Panda controversy
Canadian Christmas crackers manufacturers says a cross-cultural misunderstanding was behind Chinese-made saluting toy pandas wearing military-style hats bearing a swastika popping up in their product in 2002. “It’s not the Nazi symbol. It is a Buddhist sign,” they explained.

The Red Swastika Society
The Red Swastika Society was a voluntary association founded in China in 1922 as an Eastern answer to the Red Cross. Its mission was a broad based effort of philanthropy and moral education, running poorhouses, soup kitchens, hospitals and other relief works. Perhaps the most notable act in its history was its assistance in the burial of victims of the Nanking Massacre. Records of these activities have provided important primary resources for research into the scale of the atrocity and the location of mass graves.

Left face/right face 
While both forms are found, the left-facing swastika is most common in Chinese usage, especially after the mid-20th century and the association of the right-facing swastika with Nazism. The swastika is often found on Chinese food packaging to signify that the product is vegetarian and can be consumed by strict Buddhists, and is also sewn into the collars of Chinese children’s clothing to protect them from evil spirits.

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