Guardian of the West, and the Tiger-Dragon Pair

Chinese tradition gives the White Tiger, Baihu, as guardian of the west and one of the four celestial emblems that divide the sky, set opposite the Azure Dragon of the east. The pairing of tiger and dragon as complementary powers, earth and sky, yin and yang, matter and spirit, is old and pervasive in Chinese art, geomancy and later martial practice. Korean tradition treats the tiger as mountain spirit and guardian and gives it a place in the founding narrative of Dangun. In India the tiger is the mount of Durga in her warrior aspect, and Shiva is shown seated on a tiger skin, the animal's ferocity absorbed and mastered by the ascetic.

The tiger's real situation today is precarious in a way its old reputation as guardian and mount could not have anticipated: wild tiger numbers fell from an estimated hundred thousand around 1900 to roughly three to four thousand individuals in the wild today, three of the historic nine subspecies already extinct, and the species is listed under Appendix I of CITES, the strictest level of international trade protection; a coordinated international effort known as Tx2 set a goal of doubling wild tiger numbers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger after the goal was set, with real but uneven success across the range states.