Mouse vs Cat in Chinese Literature Read online

If the cat kills a mouse, he’ll be hung from a tree.”

  When they had sworn an oath and were done,

  They both knelt down in front of King Yama.

  King Yama then ordered the ghostly runners,

  To bring the cat and the mouse back to life.

  Receiving this order, the runners did not tarry

  And escorted both cat and mouse back to life.

  The cat and the mouse were both overjoyed.

  The ghostly runners returned to the shades,

  Where King Yama rewarded them with silver.7

  But the versions of the complaint of the mouse against the cat in traditional genres that have been collected and published in the past few decades usually stick rather closely to the traditional materials and show fewer impacts from contemporary developments. One new element we find in many of these

  traditional versions as recorded in recent decades is the argument that rats have to be extirpated because they are responsible for the dissemination of diseases. For instance, the contemporary performer Li Kejin, whose version

  was quoted in the preceding chapter, has the cat reject the claims of the mouse in the following words:

  It claims that it

  Brought the five grains

  Down to the world of red dust:

  That record of merit

  Is one big dream

  Without any basis in fact.

  It eats the grains

  And nibbles on meat,

  A wastage without any measure.

  It makes its way

  Throughout the world

  Without any concern for hygiene.

  Both its feet

  And its mouth

  Are all covered with germs

  That have brought

  To mankind

  Quite a number of diseases.8

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  In an adaptation as a “northeastern big-drum ballad” ( dongbei dagu) the mouse is accused by the cat not only of spreading diseases but also of collaborating with the Japanese during World War II:

  Spreading rat epidemics,

  He is extremely effective

  And has killed many people;

  In the war against the fake,

  He loyally served those Japs

  As an eager vanguard in battle.9

  He spreads pneumonia,

  He causes epidemics—

  These originate from him:

  He purely is

  An enemy of the people,

  As well as a murderous pest.

  In his final verdict, King Yama surprisingly does not condemn the mouse

  to eternal damnation in hell but instead banishes the animal to “the Great

  Northwest”:

  “Now that rat

  Everywhere created chaos,

  Everywhere caused damage,

  And that little cat

  Really had merit

  In exterminating these mice.”

  But he was also afraid

  That the ecology on earth

  Might become unbalanced,

  So he decided

  To banish the rat

  To the Great Northwest

  So he might pay

  For his crime by his merit

  In the construction of the border regions.10

  In the penultimate line of his text, the author described his composition as a “complaint of the cat in which old and new are mixed.”

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  ch a p t e r 5

  In a version of the tale as sung by modern performers from Linxian (Shanxi), which includes the wedding of the mouse, that wedding only becomes possible once the mouse has achieved appointment as the first of the birth-year

  images—by not waking up his good friend the cat, as the mouse has promised.

  So the cat has good reason to take his revenge on the mice when he is woken up by the noise of the wedding procession. When the cultural cadre and performer Kang Yunxiang (b. 1946) published this version, he provided a note

  stating that he had written this adaptation in 1978 (so after the fall of the Gang of Four) in cooperation with the performer Fan Rulin (1925–2010) on the basis of a text that was performed by blind singers, “as a contribution to social education stressing sincerity and trust.”11 As we also have a ballad from Linxian that does not include the story of the mouse cheating on the cat, we may

  assume that Kang and Fan were responsible for this addition to the tale.12 In their version, the judge has been changed to the Jade Emperor, probably

  because the Jade Emperor also plays a central role in the opening tale and is less tainted by the stain of “superstition.” Remarkably, it is repeatedly mentioned that the Jade Emperor, living in his palace in heaven, has very little understanding of the situation on earth. This happens first when the cat has raided the wedding party of the mice and the mouse is seeking revenge:

  When the old mouse had wept quite a while,

  He suddenly came up with a great thought,

  “Since ancient times

  Dragons rely on the ocean, tigers on woods;

  Officials rely on the people, people on them.

  His Majesty the Jade Emperor up in heaven

  Doesn’t know a thing about life here below.

  Let me use sweet words to curry his favor—

  Let me bamboozle that blind Jade Emperor!

  In case the Jade Emperor believes my words,

  He’ll take revenge to right this wrong for me.”

  After some thought he had reached a decision,

  He took out his brush and wrote a complaint.13

  When the Jade Emperor is indeed taken in by the sweet talk of the mouse,

  he angrily summons the cat, also because the mouse has claimed that the cat has called him “a stupid king without the Way.” When called before the bench, the cat in his opening stance openly declares that the Jade Emperor is ignorant of conditions on earth:

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  When the cat had entered heaven’s South Gate,

  He was constantly pondering in his own mind,

  “This must be the mouse who carries a grudge

  And has falsely accused me in heaven’s court.

  When in the right one always should be brave,

  Before the Jade Emperor I’ll set things straight.”

  So when he arrived in the Lingxiao Palace hall,

  His face showed no fear, his heart was unfazed.

  (Prose) As soon as the Jade Emperor saw the cat, he shouted, “You damned

  cat! You have to make a mess of things! You were ordered to guard the gates in the human realm—who allowed you to devour the whole family of the

  mouse? And you also have to curse me as ‘a stupid king without the Way’?

  The best for you is to confess the truth!” Hearing this, the cat laughed out loudly.

  “Your Majesty the Jade Emperor, please listen to my statement!

  (Sing:)

  You, Jade Emperor,

  Are advanced in years

  And dwell at ease in the Lingxiao Palace,

  There are many things

  In the human realm

  Of which you don’t understand a thing!”14

  Of course the Jade Emperor is
eventually enlightened when he notices the

  damage wrought by the mouse in his own palace. In view of the year of com-

  position, one is tempted to see behind the Jade Emperor no one else but the Chairman and behind the mouse the Gang of Four.

  Occasionally one comes across recent adaptations in traditional genres

  that depart even more drastically from the traditional model. One example

  is a 2007 Wenzhou drum ballad in which a naive young man is convinced by

  the complaint of a mouse to lock up his cat:

  “Dear Xiaoqiang, throughout your life you have loved and protected us

  animals,

  My teachers and fellow students greatly praise you.

  But while we mice are oh so cute and lovely,

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  ch a p t e r 5

  You of all people are keeping a cat! Dear sir,

  This black cat of yours is really too detestable:

  Sporting fangs and claws it commits violence.

  It exclusively targets the members of my family—

  Many of my brothers have become its victims!

  So I implore you, sir, to chase that evil cat away,

  And I will entertain you with dances and songs.

  Xiaoqiang, the bosses of Disney all love us dearly—

  How can you bear to stand by and watch as we suffer disaster?”15

  Once the young man has given in to this request, the mice take over his house: Having successfully lodged his accusation, the mouse went home,

  Where he immediately broadcast this piece of excellent news.

  He summoned his family and convened an expanded meeting:

  Clenching their teeth, sharpening their claws, they joined the battle.

  The great army of mice set out on its expedition,

  Invading the house of Xiaoqiang in search of food:

  This one brazenly devoured his chocolate,

  That one carried off a box of sweet cakes.

  Alas, Xiaoqiang’s fine new patent leather bag

  Was made into an amusement park by these mice.

  One of those mice was the most detestable of all:

  He scattered his shit and pee right in the middle.16

  And when the mice even bite his nose, the young man comes to his senses

  and releases his cat to do its duty. One may assume that the authors of this text tried to provide a version for a contemporary audience that was free of

  “superstitious” elements.17

  In a glitzy performance of this Wenzhou drum ballad, the text is sung by a

  cute ten-year-old girl.18 This example reflects that nowadays the story of the court case of the mouse against the cat is told as a fairy tale in primary schools.

  In a recent poem for children, the divine judge has even been replaced by a dog: A mouse entered into the courtroom

  Because he wanted to accuse the cat.

  He stated that the cat was way too cruel:

  “The cat even dines on the flesh of rats!”

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  As the accuser the mouse is awash in tears,

  The accused the black cat stands to one side.

  The presiding judge, that is the brown dog;

  The clerk on duty today is a mountain goat.

  The judge the brown dog gives his verdict:

  “You evil mouse, your accusation is too rash!

  Your chewing destroys both clothes and boxes,

  You steal both cooking oil and grain to eat.

  Black cats, white cats, and tabby cats, they all

  Deserve our praise as capable catchers of rats!

  Bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow—

  Finish off all those rodents, mice and rats!”19

  Moder n and Contempor ary Authors

  on Cats and R ats

  Many modern authors of the previous century continued to adore their cats,

  and good mousers continued to be widely appreciated. The most-quoted

  statement on cats of the twentieth century, echoed in the song quoted above, may well be Deng Xiaoping’s (1904–1997) declaration that it did not matter

  whether a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice. Deng first made the statement in 1962 at a Communist Youth League conference, but it was

  often repeated in the 1990s following China’s “opening up.” But we also

  encounter authors who portray cats in a more negative light.20 These modern intellectuals were of course not the first to vilify the cat. The scholar Dai Biaoyuan (1244–1310) once explained the absence of the cat among the birth-year images as follows:

  The rat, the water buffalo, the tiger, the hare, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog, and the pig all are recognized by humans and called the twelve birth-year images. Now the cat is

  closer to humans than any other animal but is not included. A visitor was

  puzzled by this. In his opinion the inclusion of most of the animals could be explained by their worth—but could a cat not even be compared to a snake

  or a rat? I replied, “A cat loves rich food and a cozy place, lightly shifts its allegiance, is not reliable, and lacks righteousness. Also, when it gives birth to too many kittens, it will kill its own offspring. Even snakes and rats don’t do a thing like that!”21

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  ch a p t e r 5

  But for all the complaints about lazy cats, such extreme condemnations of

  the animal were very rare in imperial times.

  The earliest work of the twentieth century in which the cat appears in a

  negative role is A New History of the Rats (Xinshu shi) by the Shanghai jour-nalist Bao Youfu, published in 1908. This rewriting of the war of the rats against the cat casts the cat as the villain and grants victory to the rodents, even though they have to rely on the assistance of the fishes and the birds. This “allegorical tale” in twelve chapters, written in simple classical Chinese, is a fable on the political fate of China in the earliest years of the twentieth century, when in the wake of the Boxers Rebellion Russian troops had occupied Manchuria,

  only to be defeated by the Japanese in 1904–5. In this text the rodents are introduced as the (degenerate) descendants of the tiger (China):

  The ancestor of the rats was the tiger.

  The tiger imposed its authority on all creatures. Those who followed it like the wind venerated it as king. But after several generations its power diminished and therefore its inherited nature changed. Thereupon it engendered rats.

  Now, the rat was far inferior in courage and strength to the tiger, but it

  was richer in devious schemes: it was pliable and cunning. It was well aware that it could not continue its ancestor’s power, and afraid that it would be maligned and cursed by the world, it rid itself of the title of king and, joining the lowest rank of the five ranks of nobility, called itself “baron.” Because the rat had a low opinion of itself, others also came to have a low opinion of the rat, and all creatures of the world called it “Baron Rat” (Shuzi).22

  Once Baron Rat had assumed this title, it established a Rat Queen. The

  Rat Queen gave birth to rat sons and also to rat daughters, which in their

  turn continued to proliferate. Generation
upon generation the tribe of rats grew and expanded and became increasingly numerous. Thereupon Baron

  Rat established a government, appointed a rat chancellor and a rat com-

  mander, and instituted the high and low rat offices for court and countryside to administer the population of rats, male and female, old and young.23

  Having lost their original nature, the proliferating rats are reduced to poverty. The proposal of a cunning rat to resort to stealing is initially indignantly refused by Baron Rat, but eventually Baron Rat has to give in:

  But the cunning rat continued and said, “As our nation proliferates our

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  of our rat nation.” The assembled rats below the court hall all had no time for other concerns because they wanted to get some food and joined their

  voices together: “May Your Majesty out of consideration for the extremely

  serious situation of the livelihood of the rats grant this request! That would be the greatest blessing for the nation of rats and the greatest blessing for our rat nation.”

  Baron Rat had no other option but to assent to their request, and the rats

  from that moment on all left their country to engage in theft.24

  Eventually they are confronted by a monster (the cat, Russia) that kills

  enough of them to instill fear into the rodent nation. And when the army of rats has been ingloriously defeated by the cat, the rats can only seek peace on the most humiliating terms: