Đông Hồ prints depict a number of animals found around farms such as the carp, buffalo, frog, toad, duck but by far the most popular animal is the chicken, the pig comes second. Prints used as good luck charms are commonly called tranh gà lơn which means pictures of chicken and pigs. This goes to show their importance in people’s cultural lives, and the wealth of hopes and meanings embedded into their images.
A flock of chicken is an allusion to fertility, to having a big family with lots of children and grandchildren. Story goes that the print above, Gà thư hùng (the name of a local breed of chicken), was designed by the woodcut master Đám Giác as a wedding present for the local official Chánh Hoàn’s daughter in 1915. Beside the image, in Nôm – the old Vietnamese writing system using Chinese characters, he engraved the phrase lắm con nhiều cháu giống lông giống cánh (children and grandchildren in flocks, sharing the same feathers, the same wings). The image consists of a full family of rooster, hen, and chicks in the composition of a swirl, with their male and female energy complimenting each other like the yin and yang, creating perfect harmony.
Likewise, prints of a family of pigs carries the same wishes, the wish for a flourishing and prosperous family.
an older design of the same image, the circles on their body is the symbol of yin and yang, of harmony: