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Since totems came up, here's something cool. Nowadays everyone goes for either dragon or panda as the Chinese national mascot. Actually, those are super-recent...
People only really got interested in dragons as mascots under the Qing Dynasty, when the idea of national pride appeared and stuff like a flags and anthems became de rigueur, and no one cared much about pandas at all.
Actually, the OG Chinese from the third millennium BC were probably a bear totem tribe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Emperor#Xuanyuan_and_Youxiong
Just like the early Koreans, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangun#Myth
Same goes for a whole bunch of other tribes across Northeast Asia. Basically, if you were a hunter-gatherer tribe, bears were about as badass as it got, so you wanted them on your side: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/publictn/acta/20/asi20-001-janhunen.pdf
As the Chinese took up sedentary farming, bears were less of a big deal - the spirits of earth and grain took over. Nowadays bears are associated with stupidity rather than awe-inspiring divine power. http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/sheji.html
