14-Feb-2010 Ramblings

Wu Xing Gallbladder

No, I’m not ordering any really exotic dinner. This being the Year of the Tiger, includes my birthday. Out of curiosity, and forgetting much of what I learned in a college Chinese mythology course, I checked Wikipedia for details. But I did remember that I am a tiger, more specifically a Wood Tiger, but not that good a golfer. Or philanderer.

Why am I mentioning this while mocking a Chinese Food menu? This week, I become the latest in a long line of Pauls to lose their gallbladders to the biological waste bin of ancestry. Wikipedia’s entry on Year of the Tiger led me to this funny:

In Chinese medicine, wood is associated with negative feelings of anger, and positive feelings of patience and altruism. Organs associated with this element are the liver (yin) and the gall bladder (yang), the eyes and the tendons.

So, will I lose my yang? Maybe only if my surgeon (perhaps not ironically named Dr. Go) uses wooden chopsticks.