Although modern scholars use the word "Taotie", it is actually not known what word the Shang and Zhou dynasties used to call the design on their bronze vessels; as American paleographer and scholar of ancient China, Sarah Allan, notes, there is no particular reason to assume that the term taotie was known during the Shang period. The first known usage of Taotie is in the Zuo Zhuan, a narrative history of China written in 30 chapters between 722 and 468 BCE. It is used to refer to one of the four evil creatures of the world : a greedy and gluttonous son of the Jinyun clan, who lived during the time of the mythical Yellow Emperor. Within the Zuo Zhuan, taotie is used by the writer to imply a "glutton". Nonetheless, the association of the term taotie is synonymous with the motifs found on the ancient Zhou bronzes. The following passage from Lü Buwei's Spring and Autumn Annals states: However, Allan believes the second part of the sentence should be translated as follows because the association between gluttony and the dings use for food sacrifices to the "insatiable" spirits of the dead is significant. Li Zehou, a Chinese scholar of philosophy and intellectual history, thinks the description of the taotie in the Spring and Autumn Annals has a much deeper meaning and that "the meaning of 'taotie is not "eating people" but making a mysterious communication between people and Heaven."
Bronze motifs
Scholars have long been perplexed over the meaning of this theriomorphic design, and there is still no commonly held single answer. The hypotheses range from Robert Bagley's belief that the design is a result of the casting process, and rather than having an iconographic meaning was the artistic expression of the artists who held the technological know-how to cast bronze, to theories that it depicts ancient face masks that may have once been worn by either shamans or the god-kings who were the link between humankind and their deceased ancestors. The once-popular belief that the faces depicted the animals used in the sacrificial ceremonies has now more or less been rejected. Modern academics favor an interpretation that supports the idea that the faces have meaning in a religious or ceremonial context, as the objects they appear on are almost always associated with such events or roles. As one scholar writes "art styles always carry some social references." It is interesting that even Shang divination inscriptions shed no light on the meaning of the taotie.
Later interpretations
During the Ming dynasty, a number of scholars compiled lists of traditional motifs seen in architecture and applied art, which eventually became codified as the Nine Children of the Dragon. In the earliest known list of this type, given by Lu Rong in his Miscellaneous records from the bean garden, the taotie appears with a rather unlikely description, as a creature that likes water and depicted on bridges. However, a well-known later list of the Nine Children of the Dragon given by Yang Shen accords with both the ancient and the modern usage of the term: Some scholars believed that the Taotie motif is a reference to Chi You and is used to serve as a warning to people who covet power and wealth. In the Book of Imaginary BeingsJorge Luis Borges interpreted the figures as representing a dog-headed, double-bodied monster that represented greed and gluttony.
The Tao Tie are the primary antagonists in the 2016 historical-fantasy epic film The Great Wall. In the film, they are depicted as green-skinned quadrupedal alien creatures, with shark-like teeth, eyes located on their shoulders, and the Tao Tie motif visible on their heads. They are shown living in a eusocial hive similar to ants, where they attack the capital of China every 60 years to collect food to feed their queen. Taotie is the name of a warthog enemy character in DreamWorks's animated series. Taotie, Shadow of the Yang Zing is a dragon-like creature in the trading card gameYu-Gi-Oh!. Taotie is one of the Four Perils of the Grandis in the MapleStory. The Taotie appear in Valt the Wonder Deer.
