AN OLD, TREASURED FRIEND THAT IS PART OF THE FAMILY

The recent Lunar New Year marks the start of the Year of the Pig, Zhao Xu reports

The pig, which appears as the last of the 12 Chinese zodiac creatures, has undoubtedly struck an emphatic cultural note. The reason, says Shi Chao of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, is simple. "We Chinese value family above almost everything else. And, of all the zodiac animals, the pig is the one most closely associated with the Chinese notion of a family," he says, pointing to a piece of oracle bone dating to China's Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC).

The symbol on the ox scapula is the antecedent of the contemporary Chinese" ", meaning family.