Why riddles can be as hard as capturing a tiger

The ancient Chinese used to call their lantern riddles “word tigers,” or 文虎, as guessing a lantern riddle could be as difficult a trying to capture a tiger, whose whereabouts were usually uncertain and hard to figure out.

The Chinese also described guessing a lantern riddle as “beating a tiger" 打虎 or “shooting a tiger" 射虎.

A lantern riddle usually consists of a riddle 谜面 and its answer 谜底, sometimes with a hint 谜目. In ancient China literati and scholars played the word game while enjoying a drink.

The earliest recorded word riddle was on a tomb of a filial daughter in the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). A lantern riddle formed after the appearance of a word riddle.

According to historical records, people in Hangzhou City around the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) were seen guessing lantern riddles during the Lantern Festival.

A folk story relates to the origin of a lantern riddle.

Once upon a time a landlord judged people according to their clothes. He refused to give food to a poor young man surnamed Wang during the Lantern Festival due to the latter’s ragged clothing.

The young man felt insulted. He made a lantern and attached a riddle under it: “A sharp head on a slim body with silver white skin, yet the eyes are on the butt, recognizing clothes only and no people.”

The landlord was irritated, but the youth explained that the answer was just a needle.

It later became a tradition for people to appreciate colored lanterns and guessing the riddles attached beneath them.

The ancient lanterns for the Lantern Festival were gauze lanterns. Their styles were diverse, such as the animal-shaped phoenix, red-crowned crane, reindeer, rabbit, eagle, tiger and horse lanterns; the plant-shaped mushroom, water chestnut and tree lanterns; and the goddess-shaped fairy and Eight Immortals lanterns.

People wrote riddles with ink and a brush on rice paper, and attached the roll of paper under a lantern.

Tang Yin (1470-1523), better known as Tang Bohu, a painter and scholar in the Jiangnan area, is said to have been accepted into an important tutorship thanks to his success in guessing correctly a word riddle. He was born into a family who ran a tavern.

As his parents were busy receiving guests, Tang spent his leisure time painting. Some of the pictures were nice so his parents pinned them on the wall.

They attracted the attention of a scholar who drank at the tavern and he recommended Tang to a well-known painter for a potential tutorship.

The painter tested Tang’s wits through posing a riddle based on a Chinese character.

“The character contains three parts horizontally,” he said. “Without the left part, it is a tree; without the central part, it is a tree; without the right part, it is a tree; and without the left and right part, it still is a tree.”

Tang pondered for a while and wrote down the Chinese character 彬, as in the language both 木, 杉 and 林 is a tree.

In Shanghai, riddle-related events enjoyed high popularity in the reign of emperors Tongzhi and Guangxu in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

In the now Yuyuan Garden, there rose several riddle guessing societies such as the Jade Spring Hut 玉泉轩 and the Recluse 素隐社. Other clubs on riddle guessing included the Rihe Recluse 日河隐社, the Duckweed 萍社, the Spring Lantern 春灯社 and the Tiger Association 虎会.

Nowadays, in Fengjing Town of the coastal Jinshan District, lantern riddle guessing remains a popular festivity among the locals.