Origins of Door Gods
Qin Qiong (also known as Qin Shubao) has pale skin and usually carries swords; Yuchi Gong (also known as Yuchi Jingde) has dark skin and usually carries batons.
Qin and Yuchi, in a Tang dynasty legend, were told by the emperor to guard the door because of a ghost harassing him, thus resulting in sleepless nights. When Qin and Yuchi were called, they guarded the emperor's door. Thus, the emperor had a blissful sleep. The next day, the emperor, not wanting to trouble his two generals, called on men to hang portraits of the two men on either side of his door.
Read more about this topic: Door God
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins, door and/or gods:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The Indian gods are imposing, the Greek gods are not. Indeed they are not brave, not self-controlled, they have no manners, they are not gentlemen and ladies.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)