Mirage
The shape-changing shen is believed to cause a mirage or Fata Morgana. Shen- synonyms meaning "mirage" include shenlou 蜃樓 (with "multi-storied building", Schafer's 1989:396 "clam castle" or "high house of the clam-monsters"), shenqi 蜃氣 (with qi "breath; pneuma"), shenqilou 蜃氣樓, haishishenlou 海市蜃樓 (with "sea city/market"), and shenjing 蜃景 (with "scenery"). In Japanese vocabulary, shinkirō 蜃気楼 is the usual word for "mirage". Compare the association between the long 龍 "dragon" and "waterspouts", evident in words like longjuan 龍卷 (lit. "dragon roll") "waterspout" and longjuanfeng 龍卷風 ("dragon roll wind") "cyclone; tornado" (Visser 1913:220-224).
Read more about this topic: Shen (clam-monster), Meanings
Famous quotes containing the word mirage:
“Whom we desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“Go out of the house to see the moon, and ‘t is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who could ever clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: ‘t is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the idea of a classless society is ... a disastrous mirage which cannot be maintained without tyranny of the few over the many. It is even more pernicious culturally than politically, not because the monolithic state forces the party line upon its intellectuals and artists, but because it has no social patterns to reflect.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)