Cute Google Doodle for the Chinese New Year of the Horse.
A quick look around Wikipedia on the horse in Chinese history and mythology and we find...
Zhang Qian, a diplomat and explorer who brought strong horses and alfalfa seed for fodder back to early imperial China in the mid second century BC - a vital development, and one of his many achievements and discoveries, along with the development of trade with the West that would become known as the Silk Route. Without him, China might have remained isolated and impoverished for decades, and it would be easy for someone wishing to so alter history to waylay him on his travels. And the Doctor loves meeting fellow explorers...
The War of the Heavenly Horses a few decades later, a historical event grown to myth about massed battles to seize the greatest horses in the world. Who would control the steppes if history was rewritten? Would China be wildly different - or even there at all? Would the Mongols run wild over the world even more freely in the centuries to come?
Ox-Head and Horse-Face, demon guardians of the underworld, enemies of MONKEY! - who also travelled with Tripitaka’s dragon-turned-horse - and the sort of monsters often seen in the Davies era of Doctor Who. What might bring these nightmare images to life?
Have a good day and a good year!
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