Why are there so many allusions to "fighting tigers"? Are there many tigers in ancient times?

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In ancient China, almost whenever heroes were mentioned, a story about fighting a tiger would be used to prove it. To illustrate, this hero's title is worthy of his name. For example, Li Guang, the famous flying general in the Western Han Dynasty, knew that tigers were rampant in Youbeiping, so he took his followers and shot the tigers himself. Once, when he was on his way with his entourage, he suddenly found a tiger nesting deep in the jungle, so he shot it with an arrow. As a sharp archer, Li Guang is naturally a perfect hit, and this time is no exception. But when the followers walked in, they discovered that there was no tiger here. It turned out to be a stone shaped and colored like a tiger. But what shocked everyone was that although it was a "stone tiger", General Li's arrow still hit the target, and the arrowhead was still deeply embedded in the stone. Li Guang himself found it incredible, and deliberately shot a few more arrows. As a result, sparks shot out when they hit the stone, but they never hit the stone again.

In the famous "Water Margin", there is also the story of Wu Erlang fighting a tiger at Jingyanggang. Although the story of Wu Song fighting a tiger is a fabrication, the prototype of this story comes from "The Drunken Old Man" by Luo Ye of the Southern Song Dynasty. "Martial Walker" recorded in "Tan Lu" also tells the story of how a hero named Wu eliminates harm for the people and kills tigers. Ancient people often hunted tigers. Were there many tigers in ancient times?

As we all know, the only place where tigers exist in China today is in the Northeast. Someone once said that a South China tiger was photographed, but it was later confirmed that the photo was fake. In ancient China, due to the sparse population, many places were inaccessible, and there were records of tigers appearing in many places.

For example, in Sizhou, which is today's Jiangsu Province, a tiger was captured alive and was presented as tribute to Song Taizu by the local government. In order to test how ferocious the tiger was, Song Taizu let a sheep in. The tiger pounced on the sheep without saying a word, bit off the sheep's head, and then tore the sheep's body apart. It ate the meat and drank the blood at the same time, showing its cruelty and bloodthirst. Especially the tiger's eyes, when staring at people, are so fierce that people dare not look directly.

Nowadays, anyone who has stayed in Suzhou knows a place called Tiger Hill. Local chronicles record that in September of the second year of Zhidao in the Northern Song Dynasty, which was the last year of Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty, a tiger suddenly appeared in Suzhou and ate several people in succession at night. The local government organized hunters to hunt this man-eating tiger. But it was in vain.

"Song History, Biography of Martyrs" records a touching story in Qingyuan Mansion, which is today's Ningbo, Zhejiang. In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, a woman named Tong Bana was traveling with her mother. Suddenly a tiger jumped out of the jungle, took Tong Bana's mother in its mouth, and left. Tong Bana held on tightly to the tiger's tail to prevent the tiger from taking her mother away. So the tiger put down her mother, picked her up and carried her away. After the local government learned about it, in order to commemorate this filial daughter who sacrificed her life for her mother, they built an ancestral hall at the place where she was taken away by a tiger for people to commemorate.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong caused chaos in Sichuan and many people died. So in Chengdu, people can see tigers moving around the city in broad daylight. A scholar who was escaping from disaster also saw six white tigers on the other side of the moat in broad daylight. Walking by the river. It can be seen from this that the tiger problem has reached such an extent due to war and famine.

Tiger is at the top of the mammal food chain. According to the latest research, an adult tiger has an activity range of 50 square kilometers. Therefore, there were so many tigers in ancient times, which also shows how wide the range of forest vegetation was at that time. Today, as the human population increases, the scope of human activities becomes larger, and human weapons become more powerful. If you want to see a tiger now, you probably have to go to the zoo.