One began as a war beast in a two-thousand-year-old history and ended up on office desks. The other has been thanked, courted and painted in China for two thousand years, and now sits, paw raised, beside the till in shops across the Chinese-speaking world. Here are their stories, the customs that grew around them, and how to choose one you will enjoy looking at.
The pixiu: from the battlefield to the desk
One of the oldest mentions of the pixiu is a battle. Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian says the Yellow Emperor trained bears, pixiu, tigers and other fierce beasts to fight the Yan Emperor at Banquan; a Tang commentator explained that these were soldiers given the names of fierce animals to frighten the enemy. For centuries afterwards “pixiu” was a byword for brave troops, and the beast was painted on the banners of war chariots for its fearsome look.
The Han dynasty turned the beast to stone. In the Luoyang Museum stands an Eastern Han stone guardian dug up in 1992 at Mengjin, about a kilometre from the tomb of Emperor Guangwu: 1.9 metres tall, 2.9 metres long and roughly eight tonnes, eyes glaring, brows raised, tongue out, wings swept high, one forepaw gripping a small animal, caught mid-stride. A third-century commentator, Meng Kang, wrote that such winged beasts with one horn might be called tianlu and those with two bixie; folk tradition later folded them all into the pixiu we know today.
The legends came later and are more fun. In the best-known one the pixiu, which fed on gold and jewels, fouled the ground and angered the Jade Emperor, who sealed its rear with a slap: from then on treasure went in and never came out. Another makes it the mount of the strategist Jiang Ziya. A third calls it a son of the dragon, though the best-known Ming lists of the dragon’s nine sons, by Li Dongyang and Yang Shen, do not include it. Emperor Qianlong prized a Han jade bixie enough to have his own poem carved on its chest and a two-tier sandalwood stand made for it, with the poem carved again on the stand; the piece is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei today.
By old convention the male is pi and the female xiu, which is why the two names travel together, and why the figures are so often kept as a pair.
Customs around the pixiu
Jewellers pass on a set of habits: wear a pixiu bracelet on the left wrist with the head pointing outward, towards the little finger; once you have worn it, don’t let others handle it; at home, set the pixiu with its mouth towards the front door, and some say never point it at a bed. The rules vary from one teller to the next, and some even say men wear it on the left and women on the right. In 2025 Jonker Walk in Malacca went further and made a 688-kilogram, five-metre “prosperity pixiu” its New Year mascot, facing east to catch the first light of day and towards the Malacca River, “to draw in wealth”. In Perak and Penang there are troupes that dance the pixiu the way others dance the lion (one master in Perak builds the heads himself), and the story goes that the beast swallows everything and lets nothing out. These are customs, not promises. They are simply a way of living with an object you like.
The lucky cat: from the altar to the till
The Chinese were thanking cats long before anyone made a waving one. The Book of Rites describes the great year-end sacrifice, the zha, at which everything that had done its work that year was thanked, and the cat, paired with the tiger, was among the eight so honoured: “We welcome the cat, for it eats the field mice.” The cat guarded the granary, so each winter it was welcomed and given offerings. The rite lasted for centuries; a Song court hymn still sings of “the rites reaching the cat and the tiger”.
The domestic cat proper reached China along the Silk Road only around the Tang dynasty, and by the Song it was the scholar’s darling. Song people did not “buy” a cat; they “betrothed” one. To ask a neighbour for a kitten you brought salt or small fish as the bride-price: in the Wu dialect salt sounds like yuan, the affinity that brings two lives together. Lu You wrote of “wrapping salt to welcome a little cat, who guards my mountain study’s ten thousand books”; Huang Tingjian, plagued by mice, went to “buy fish, thread them on a willow twig and betroth a cat”. In some places a “cat contract” was written out, recording its colouring and the lucky day it would come home, as if welcoming a relative.
In Chinese painting the cat has long been a lucky sign. Mao, cat, sounds like the word for eighty years of age; die, butterfly, like the word for ninety; so a cat gazing up at a butterfly is a birthday wish for long life, a subject that became hugely popular from the mid-Ming onward, on hanging scrolls and even snuff bottles. The Xuande Emperor painted cats himself. In 1429 he gave his chief minister Yang Shiqi Wealth and Honour in a Vase: peonies in full bloom in an ancient bronze vessel, with a cat nearby. The peony stood for prosperity, and the cat, in this emperor’s eyes, was the loyal officer who catches rats and the corrupt alike. The cat as a herald of guests is old too. A Tang miscellany records the saying “when a cat washes its face past its ears, guests will come”. So the lucky cat’s paw, lifted to the ear, is not strange to Chinese eyes at all.
The waving cat itself is an import, but it has made itself at home in Chinese shops. In Singapore and Malaysia you will find one in many homes and businesses, and for a friend opening a shop it is a gift that cannot go wrong. The usual reading is that the right paw invites money, the left invites customers and both paws invite both, though some tell it the other way round. Colours have their readings too: gold for wealth, pink for love, even blue, said to keep you safe on the road. Every shop tells it slightly differently, so there is no need to argue the point.
Malaysia even has a city whose name means cat: Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, is the Malay word for cat (spelt kucing today). Accounts of how the city got its name differ, but Kuching has made the cat its emblem. Several families of cat statues stand around town: the big white cat with a raised paw on Jalan Padungan is the best known, and a group of two adults and seven kittens stood for Sarawak’s nine divisions at the time. There is also a Cat Museum with four galleries and more than four thousand cat-related exhibits. A lucky cat in a Kuching shop is among relatives.
How to choose
- Material. Glass catches the light and suits a desk, windowsill or shelf. Brass is heavier and sits steadily on a bookshelf or cabinet.
- Pair or single. Pixiu usually come as a pair; a lucky cat is usually one.
- Occasion. A new home, a new office or a friend’s shop opening are the classic moments. For a colleague, a small glass piece is an easy choice.
- Care. A soft cloth is all you need. Glass can chip, so handle it gently and place it securely; keep brass away from damp and cleaning products.
A cousin: the money toad
The three-legged toad belongs to the same family of household figures. Folklore often seats it near the entrance with a coin in its mouth, because chan, toad, rhymes with qian, money; it makes a natural companion to a pixiu or a cat. Which way should it face? A Malaysian feng shui column says the pixiu faces the door or a window to take in qi, while the toad faces inward; others say the toad should face out. As ever, it depends on who is telling it.
For the twelve animals and the customs of a birth year, read our Chinese zodiac gift guide; more auspicious figures are in the Auspicious Forms collection.