Mouse vs Cat in Chinese Literature Read online

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  A Ta l e w i t hou t Sh a pe or Sh a dow

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  Shamefacedly Judge Bao met with the Song ruler.

  The Buddha greatly blamed him for his lack of care

  That had left the people with a major predator.

  Because of this he gifted him with yet another box:

  The creature inside that box was none else but me!

  The Buddha instructed the Heavenly Master Zhang

  To carry me in his arms down to the Eastern Capital,

  And addressing Bao Wenzheng, he ordered that man

  To return me upon the extermination of the demons.

  Judge Bao promised that he would send me back;

  The Heavenly Master also made that commitment.

  When welcomed into the court to kill the demons,

  I, this cat, saw them clearly at first sight on their mat.

  These Five Rats were that moment seated on their mat,

  But as soon as they saw me, this cat, they all fainted.

  Between my jaws I caught the eldest of the rats,

  And with my forelegs I caught Rats Two and Three.

  With my hind legs I stepped on Rats Four and Five,

  And so I had killed and removed these Five Rats.

  But I wasn’t careful enough and also slackened,

  And in this way one rat could escape into a hole.

  The Heavenly Master appealed to the Buddha again,

  And the Buddha told me to wait outside the hole.

  Once I had caught the rat, they would send me back,

  So I stayed there for a while in the Eastern Capital.

  Who could have known this rat would be pregnant:

  Inside their hole these rodents proliferated again.

  Even though they do not break any celestial law,

  They rob and they steal and cause much damage.

  They rob the wall foundations and so ruin houses;

  They steal the people’s grain and eat their flour.

  Their chewing ruins clothes and boots and hats,

  They gnaw to pieces Classics left us by the sages.

  They may not care about the urgent documents

  But have the gall to drink the oil in Buddha lamps.

  They are the first to taste the offerings to the gods:

  Abusing so the gods, their crime can’t be allowed!

  They steal the grain and beans stored in the granaries,

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  And so abuse authorities, a crime that is not minor.

  Their many crimes are way too many to be counted—

  And then they blocked the chance that I go home.

  They wrecked my magic power that I can’t complete,

  And broke my Great Completion that I can’t achieve.

  I have conceived a seething hatred for their kind:

  Could I allow them to bring home a bride again?

  I gaze upon the Western Paradise that I will never see,

  I long for that old road back home that I can’t travel.

  These things can all be documented and be proven,

  That false and wrongful accusation is one blatant lie.

  Each sentence in my statement is according to the truth,

  So I implore Your Lordship to investigate the facts!”

  Now tell that when Lord Yama had listened to this long testimony of the

  cat and had read his statement of defense, he had a clear understanding of

  the case. So next he called the rat forward again: “What do you have to say?”

  The mouse replied,

  “The cat is not a local citizen who owns some land,

  But is a person who arrived from Western Regions.

  He is here in the Eastern Capital a foreign resident,

  Because we let him live amongst us as a stranger.

  I never had an issue with him over any kind of business,

  So I don’t know the cause of his deep hatred.

  But when I see him, I make sure to cede the way—

  In contrast it is he who wants to seek my traces.

  But even though we tolerate his hatred and his grudge,

  He is too cruel in the way in which he will abuse us.

  Whenever any of the rodent sons or brothers will go out,

  I urge them many, many times to flee his presence.

  Because if once by chance you fail to flee from him,

  He’ll swallow us all equally, both young and old alike.

  The road to fire and water so is constantly obstructed,50

  As we at home all close the door, afraid to go outside.”

  On saying this, Old Mouse was overcome by a great pain;

  His eyes shed tears—a downpour from the heavens!

  “The others things he made me suffer, those are fine,

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  A Ta l e w i t hou t Sh a pe or Sh a dow

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  But why kill all the relatives who left to fetch the bride?

  Lord Yama, please ensure that justice here is done on my behalf:

  Just look at all the pain I suffer—does it count as none?”

  Now tell that when Lord Yama had heard Old Mouse tell his story, he

  slapped the table in his rage and said, “After in the Song dynasty the Five Rats had created havoc and you had been the only one to survive, you

  should have fled far away to hide yourself. You should not have stayed in

  the Eastern Capital and made it your home. You should have adhered to

  the common law in order to compensate for your former sins. How could

  you dare bring home a bride and sire sons in order to harm the common

  people? No one is more detestable! Now step back and I will give my verdict.”

  He told the associate judge to spread out a sheet of paper, and taking up his brush, he judged as follows:

  Ever since his birth, Old Mouse has brought harm to the common

  people. Yet he dared commit the crime of a wrongful accusation in

  lying words. But in consideration of the sages’ wisdom, I will practice

  leniency and not pursue this further. Those who have died already will

  be sent to Shade Mountain. Those who, following the defeat, are still

  alive are banished to the foot of the western wall.

  He further instructed Wildcat, “You cannot be satisfied with yourself. You

  still will have to make your rounds every day. This case will be preserved as precedent.” Old Mouse thought to himself,

  “Only in death I realize now that I have been wrong:

  I never should have made this accusation of the cat.”

  [King Yama] also commented,

  “If you had fetched no bride, you had not suffered any harm,

  You made the wrong decision, so you have no one to blame.

  Lodging this accusation in the underworld, you earned to die:

  A mouse that takes a cat to court for murder makes no sense.”

  Lord Yama in his precious hall displayed great magnanimity,

  So keep to your lot, accept your fate, and don’t act foolishly.

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  5

  Peace Negotiations and Dys
topias

  T h e t w e n t i et h ce n t u ry wa s a pe r iod of t u m u lt uous

  change in China. Weakened by internal rebellions, the impact of imperialism, and a loss of faith in inherited institutions and their supporting ideology, the Manchu Qing dynasty abdicated in 1911 to make way for the Chinese Republic. A long summary of China’s history that introduces one adaptation of the court case of the mouse against the cat sketches the political and moral chaos that followed:

  The revolution succeeded,

  The laws were changed,

  And chaos ensued all around;

  The Three Norms

  And the Five Rules

  Now are not practiced anymore.

  The books of the sages

  Are not read or studied

  Because there are new writings;

  Men cut their queues,

  Women unbind their feet,

  Men and women now mingle.

  In the east there’s a strongman

  And in the west there’s a bully,

  Bringing havoc to the cosmos;

  Throughout the land

  Local bandits emerge

  Who plunder and rob the people.

  All of China

  Pays gold and silver,

  All kinds of miscellaneous taxes:

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  These warlords

  May be compared

  To a bunch of man-eating jackals!1

  During this “warlord era” of the late 1910s and the early 1920s, the country was torn apart by civil strife and foreign aggression. The Nationalist Party (Guomindang) succeeded in unifying a large part of the country under its

  control in 1927. But after 1937, confronted with the open aggression of Japan, which already had established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932, the

  central government had to retreat from Nanjing to Chongqing, while the

  Communist Party established its base at Yan’an. In the civil war (1945–49) that followed Japan’s global defeat, the Chinese Communist Party was victorious.

  The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, after which the Communist government embarked on a total transformation of Chinese economy

  and culture, a policy that culminated in the Great Leap Forward (1958–61)

  and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). When the failure of this Marxist

  social engineering became undeniable, the government shifted to a policy

  that prioritized nationalism and economic growth while insisting on the

  power monopoly of the Communist Party.

  One aspect of the cultural transformation of China in the twentieth cen-

  tury was the emergence of a new literature that rejected the language, forms, and contents of the premodern elite literature and embraced fiction. For

  inspiration, the authors of this new literature of the May Fourth generation in the 1920s looked not only to Western literature but also to the indigenous popular traditions. The result was the folklore movement, first centered at Peking University in Beijing and later at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.2 A second wave of nationwide collecting of oral and popular literature followed in the 1950s, but this was brutally interrupted by the onset of the Cultural Revolution. A third massive wave of collecting and documenting

  oral and popular literature was organized immediately after the Cultural

  Revolution, when many scholars and cultural cadres were very much aware

  that most of the surviving practitioners were advanced in age, reached only a very much reduced audience, and often had no successors. In the early

  years of the twenty-first century, China embraced the United Nations Edu-

  cational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program for the

  preservation of the world’s intangible cultural heritage, which resulted in many new initiatives to collect and preserve materials. While many genres

  of popular and oral literature continued to be practiced throughout the

  twentieth century and may display only a very few obvious signs of change,

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  some practitioners used the genre at their disposal to comment on the

  changes that occurred around them and inventively incorporated the new

  concepts and terminology in their works, often for comic purposes.3 At the

  same time, we encounter modern authors who were inspired by the forms

  and themes of popular and oral literature, even when they painted the cat

  in a very negative light.

  Actualized Versions of the Court Case

  While some versions of the tale of the mouse and the cat incorporated the

  war between the rodents and felines, one author of the 1920s working in the traditional genre of the Minnanese ballad was inspired by the political developments inside and outside China of the early twentieth century to incor-

  porate peace conferences and extended negotiations in his version. Doing

  so, the author wove a large number of recent neologisms into his text. This adaptation was called The Newest Version of the Complete Song of the Mutual Accusations of the Cat and the Mouse (Zuixin Maoshu xianggao quange), and its author hid his identity under the pseudonym Opium First or Mr. Opium

  (Yapian Xian), quite likely in reference not to his personal addiction (if any) but to the lack of political awareness of his fellow citizens who allowed China to be sliced up like a melon by local warlords and foreign powers.4

  After yet another near-fatal encounter with a cat, a mouse calls a meeting

  to elect a delegate to serve as envoy of the mice for peace talks with the cats: Once more he saw he had no way to escape disaster:

  As the weaker party he could only suffer in silence.

  Because he had to suffer in silence without any end,

  On one certain day he called all his brothers together.

  He sent out announcements calling for a conference,

  And set as the day the first fifth, from mao till you.5

  “All should come together!” they were informed.

  Announcements were distributed throughout town.

  The announcements contained a long message,

  Stating that on the first fifth, from mao till you,

  They would discuss their relation with the cats

  So they would not be abused again each day!

  “The meeting will be held at South Gate’s bottomless pit:

  That’s why these announcements are now distributed.”

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  When everyone had seen these, they were informed,

  And on the first fifth they arrived for that conference.

  The chairperson rang his bell and started his speech:

  Saying, “The cats act recently as if bereft of all reason!

  Whenever our brothers go outside they are abused,

  Of the ten times this happens, they nine times die!

  Cats don’t have a doctrine of preserving lives,

  In each case they act outrageously and arbitrarily.

  This is also because of a lack of courage on our side,

  So today we have come together to deliberate.


  Let us elect a representative to engage in talks,

  So we will distribute paper and pens to all of you.

  If each and every one casts his vote in the election,

  The one who gathers the most votes will have to go.”

  They elected among themselves a sturdy fellow

  And chose a day for his discussion with the cats.6

  The cats agree to a treaty and a borderline is established, but soon, how-

  ever, it is crossed by some mice, who end up being beaten by the cats. This border dispute is followed by a conference attended by both sides at which

  the treaty is reaffirmed, only to be broken by the mice again. Eventually all attempts to maintain the peace fall apart, and mouse and cat still end up in the court of King Yama. As in one of the earliest versions we discussed in

  chapter 3, King Yama finds both parties guilty and sends both cat and mouse back to earth:

  When King Yama had heard this he concluded,

  “There is little to choose between both parties,

  As everybody is to some degree in the wrong.

  They both should suffer slow slicing in hell,

  But they have not committed any grave crime.

  I will show some leniency and go no further:

  Your allotted life span hasn’t reached its end.

  I will have ghostly runners return you to life:

  From now you both should abide by reason!

  But if you create any problems one more time,

  I will not forgive you that second time around.

  If the mouse acts the bandit, he’ll be sawed in two;

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