WHEN several thousand ''thrill-seekers'' rushed to Aberdeen wharf last week in the forlorn hope of seeing a mermaid, many people were left floundering.
Such strange events often tell us not so strange things about the way we think and live; in this case, the underlying story is partly about intra and inter-ethnic stereotypes in Hong Kong, and partly about a pan-human fascination with the abnormal.
On his return to port the bewildered fisherman, To Hei, grumbled: ''I don't believe mermaids are beautiful as they are portrayed in Western cultures. To me mermaids are strange creatures with round heads and long hair.'' In European mythology mermaids were said to lure mariners to their destruction, and imprison the souls of the drowned deep under water. Generally, it was unlucky to see a mermaid as it pressaged storm or disaster.
Many of the ideas about mermaids (mei yahn yu, the Cantonese typification which implies they are beautiful) between the East and West are similar. This even includes speculation about the factual origins of mermaid stories, such as, are they a mis-identification of dugongs (a sea cow). Only in Greek mythology do you get a clear association of the mermaid with the love goddess, Aphrodite.
Chinese journalists covering last week's story used phrases like, ''Hong Kong's superstitious fishing community'', and the ''superstitious waterfolk''. This brings to light not so latent, ancient prejudices of land-based Cantonese towards these people - the Tanka.
The fascination and the fear associated with mermaids comes from the fact that they are an anomaly - being neither human nor fish.It appears to be a universal feature of human cultures that anomalous things are imbued with great power, for neither good nor evil, and therefore are often taboo.
If we look at Tanka categorisations of fish we find their sacred fish are anomalous in their appearance or behaviour. These are the sturgeon, which is thought to be like a dragon; the strange sawfish; whales and porpoises which are mammal-like fish that resemble humans and human-domesticated animals; and turtles which are of land and of the water.