Fish in Chinese mythology

Chinese mythology refers to those myths found in the historical geographic area of China.

Alternatively, 餘, meaning "over, more than", is a true homophone, so the common Chinese New Year greeting appears as 年年有魚 or 年年有餘.

[3]: 155  Jinyu is also an homophone of gold (jin 金) and jade (yu 玉),[6] which are both indicators of wealth.

[3]: 126  There are also tales involving fish-demons (drunk men transformed into fishes) which could sometimes marry women.

According to one account, all the carp competed at a yearly competition to leap the Longmen falls; those who succeeded were immediately transformed into dragons and flew off into the sky.

There are other Dragon Gates in the rivers of China, typically with steep narrows, and the mythological geography does not depend upon an actual location.

Silver carp are strong swimmers and researchers have observed them to jump 1.81-2.24 meters (approximately 5.94 to 7.75 feet) above the surface of the water with an angle of leap of 44-70º.

In one of the stories depicting his exemplar filial piety, Wang Xiang (a young boy) went to the frozen river when his ill mother said that she wanted to eat some carp in winter; there he sat on the ice long enough to melt through the ice and a big carp immediately sprang out of the hole.

Over time, the pictographic representations tended to become increasingly stylized, until evolving to the modern standard form: