What is the significance of cattle in China culture?

Niu (Pinyin: niú) is a commonly used Chinese character, which first appeared in Shang Dynasty, and its ancient glyph looks like a cow's head with a diagonal. The original meaning is cattle.

Cattle have a hard-working nature, so it is extended to tenacity and endurance, which also means that people are stubborn and unwilling to tame easily, that is, to take the stubborn temper of cattle. Cattle also refers to the cowshed in the twenty-eight lodging houses. Cattle is also one of the surnames.

When the cow is used as the left side, it writes. Most words with cow as signifier are related to cattle, such as calf, yak and mule. Some generally refer to livestock, such as grazing, prison, grazing and so on.

hieroglyph

The principle of the word "cow" is to represent the whole with parts: as long as the most distinctive angle is depicted, it can be understood as a cow without drawing the whole body. The new attachment 1 comes from the "cow ghost" of Shang Dynasty, which is a very realistic cow head: curved corners, horizontal ears, round eyes, wide nostrils and big ribs. Typical characteristics of cattle. In the Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bone Inscriptions changed the outline of the bull's head into reality and became thinner for the convenience of writing.

But I can still see the image of a bull's head. Since then, the bronze inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty and Qin Zhuan have come down in one continuous line, and both developed along this shape. However, since the official script of the Han Dynasty, "Niu" has only one horn, and its wide mouth has become a long and pointed "tail".

Refer to the above? Baidu encyclopedia-Niu