Why do some places call geese white turtles?

The tortoise is still white?

when many people look at this topic, they will be surprised that they are "ignorant".

Let's shoot the breeze for a joke about Changzhou people:

A Changzhou person is on a business trip in other places and goes to a restaurant to order: "Boss, a white turtle in brown sauce".

when the restaurant owner heard this, he was shocked: "What? Braised white turtle? Turtles and white ones? How expensive is this? I have never seen a white turtle in my life. "

Changzhou people looked at the boss's surprise and tried to explain. When they were in a hurry, they forgot the words and stammered. They simply dragged the boss into the yard and pointed to the ducks in the yard and said, "That, white turtle, is this brother. . . . . 。”

The boss suddenly said, "Oh, goose, right?"

"Oh, yes, goose, white turtle." Changzhou people suddenly felt relieved.

"This man is really strange. He is obviously a goose. He insists on talking about a white turtle. I don't know where he came from." The boss muttered that he had gone to cook, while Changzhou people sat at the dinner table calmly, waiting for their braised white turtle to serve.

the boss doesn't know that the goose is called the white turtle, but it is actually far from Changzhou, the whole Wu-speaking area in the south of the Yangtze River, Wuxi, Suzhou, Shanghai and even some Vietnamese-speaking areas. So far, it is still called the white turtle.

when I was a child, raising geese was called raising white turtles. I don't know why I call a goose a white turtle ― of course, white is the color of a goose. Ask friends in rural areas, but friends can't explain clearly, or take Baidu Encyclopedia to explain; Ask the elders, most of whom are tongue-tied, and finally come to a sentence: that's what the older generation calls it, so we call it.

Also, in the farming era, the cultural customs were passed down roughly like this, and it was passed down from mouth to mouth, and the original origin was often forgotten, only the specific usage was remembered.

It can be seen that the explanation that Baidu knows is also invalid.

Prince Xiao Tong of Zhaoming, who compiled Selected Works, was a native of Nanlanling (now Wujin, Changzhou). Some Taoist priests thought that the geomantic omen of his mother's cemetery was not good, and he was afraid of harming his eldest son. "He buried the eldest son beside the tomb for wax geese and other things." When the incident happened, Zhaoming died of fear. History is called the "wax goose's weariness of prayer" incident.

This wax goose is probably made of beeswax. Prince Zhaoming used it as his mother's funeral, and he was tired of removing disasters and blessing. Perhaps it implied the meaning of "accepting me" (in Wu dialect, "goose" and "me" are homonyms), but it backfired, which made the emperor even more disgusted and eventually led to Zhaoming's pulse losing power. Miao Ruoguang, a Qing dynasty poet, wrote a poem, "How can I say a wax goose if I hate it?" This is the story.

Yi Zhongtian explained in Da Hua Dialect that "Goose" is even taboo in Shanghai dialect, because "Goose" and "I" are homonyms, so if you kill Goose, it will become "Kill Me", so Shanghainese call it "White Tortoise".

It's a tradition of China people to avoid taboos and seek luck. "Goose" and "I" have the same pronunciation in Wu dialect, so it's very possible to avoid taboos. Shanghai also belongs to the Wu dialect area, but Yi Zhongtian may forget that modern Shanghainese say "I" and often use "Allah", which is the Ningbo dialect. Until the 193s, most people in Shanghai said "Allah" in the streets. It can be seen that the goose is called the white turtle, which may be even older, far from being called by Shanghainese in modern times. However, even Yi Zhongtian only talked about the taboo of "My Goose", and failed to explain why the Goose was called the White Tortoise.

Perhaps Jiangnan people call the goose a white turtle. Besides taboo, there are more blessings in it. After all, in the farming era, the tortoise is an auspicious thing, which can not only ask divination, but also represent longevity. If you associate the "goose" with the tortoise, it may imply the meaning of "I am blessed".