In the Year of the Rat, Fu Na mice are welcome to get married.

With the approaching of the Year of the Rat, we in China have a special feeling for mice. Perhaps, when we celebrate New Year's Eve, the mice are also busy with the wedding! In legend, why do mice always marry cats? I don't know. Maybe it's the cat's revenge-who let the mouse rank first in the "Zodiac" and the cat is not on the list?

According to modern people's feelings for mice, it will be very strange. According to modern people's feelings for mice, it will be very strange why mice can enter the zodiac or rank first, but cats can't make the list.

The answer to this question is that the zodiac reflects the life of ancient ancestors, not the life of modern people. The ancestors envied the mouse's agility and rotating eyes. The local custom in our country still thinks that Xiao Shu is clever, which is the relic of this ancient bionics.

-the mouse in the mural appears as a child god, playing the role of exorcism, strangeness and soul absorption.

The spirituality of a mouse is not limited to its intelligence. It can "bite the sky" and lead people to the paradise. What a good skill! This is based on archaeology-1979 to 198 1 year. During the excavation of Wang Lurui's tomb in Dongan County in the first year of Wuping in Beiqi, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province (570), it was found that the top of the tomb and the middle and upper columns were painted with murals such as star maps, zodiac signs, Leigong and Dian Mu. Among them, the zodiac map is the first one. The column on the tomb is arranged in the order of due north mouse and due east rabbit, with a height of 1 m and a length of 4.3 m, and only rats, cows, tigers and rabbits are left. Murals in the tomb are based on auspicious signs and astronomical phenomena, which are used to repel victory, exorcise evil spirits and guide the owner's soul to heaven. The mice in the murals appear in the form of child gods, and also play the role of exorcism, curiosity and soul absorption.

This philosophy of "the mouse is the boss" is really strange to modern people, but it is a part of the spiritual history of the ancients.

-The Book of Songs is a rebellious expression of ancestor's worship of mice.

Of course, the ancients had different feelings for mice. The Book of Songs Shuo Shuo said: "Shuo Shuo Shuo, I have no food. I have served you hard for years, but you don't care about me. Vowed to get rid of you and go to a happy land. Happy land, I won my place. " Mouse, mouse, don't eat our millet. I have raised you for many years, but I haven't seen you take care of us. Leave you, and we will find the promised land ourselves. That's where we live.

This is actually a rebellion against the worship of mice expressed by our ancestors. This feeling has gradually become the mainstream and is familiar to modern people, so much so that a children's song in Taiwan Province Province refers to the mouse: "A rat is a thief, and two cows drive a plow. Three Tiger Mountains are rugged, and four rabbits travel to Tokyo. Five dragons are ordered by the emperor, and six snakes are frightened. Seven horses ran to the barracks and eight sheep were grazing on the ridge. Nine monkeys climb the tree head, and ten chickens crow three times. Eleven dogs barked at each other and twelve pigs killed each other with kitchen knives, obviously showing contempt for mice.

As for the cleverness of the mouse, it was completely subverted in the following song of Suzhou peddling the wedding photos of the Taohuawu mouse:

It was a terrible New Year's Eve, and the mice were really busy doing things. Ge (this mouse) is really clever. chamber pot is very picky about toilets. The first two or three embroidered quilts are painted with red lacquer frames and gold thread. There are porcelain vases and feather dusters beside the lattice. Ge (this mouse) is really charming, laughing behind the sedan chair. Cover your head with a red scarf and put on a cotton-padded jacket. Whispering to get married, relatives and friends all left in a hurry. There was a yellow cat next to it, and a tower scraper ate it up.

Almost all the folk paper-cuts and New Year pictures with the theme of "mouse getting married" have a "yellow cat" to laugh at the mouse's boldness and stupidity. The so-called "one hundred-day celebration, bold mouse to welcome marriage." It is also true that civet cats swallow their lives and return to Yin after standing on the mountain for three times.

-Marrying a mouse is a fairy tale of the Spring Festival.

Of course, some people look at "mouse marriage" from the perspective of "fairy tale artistic conception".

According to Records of Yucheng, people there are forbidden to light lamps on the 17th night of the first month, so that mice can get married. It is popular in Hangzhou that mice marry women and steal shoes as sedan chairs on New Year's Eve. In ancient times, an anonymous person described the scene at that time and said, "You will know when you are together, and you will learn from your shoes when you are young." . Aunt Rat came to worship Aunt Rat, but Aunt Rat straightened up and thanked her. Zhou Zuoren once wrote a poem on this topic, saying, "Rats are close today, and lanterns and torches make a scene. As usual, the bride wore red clothes and put up her beard ten times. "Where is this mouse? It's obviously a person!

Mr. Lu Xun can't even lift his head with a mouse. He wrote in "Dogs, Cats and Rats" in "Flowers in the Morning": There are two pieces of flower paper in front of my bed. One is "Eight Pigeons", full of long mouths and big ears. I don't feel very elegant. The other "Mouse Married" is very cute. From the groom and bride to the best man, guests and deacons, there is no one who is not a scholar with fine features and thin legs, but it is vulgar to wear red shirts and green pants. Meeting a human on the road, the wedding ceremony is just an advertisement for sexual intercourse. But at that time, I wanted to see the ceremony of "mouse getting married", but I was fascinated.

Mr. Lao She "paraphrased" the humor in this passage of Mr. Lu Xun's in "A Miscellaneous Talk on a Rat's Nest", saying that his rat's nest was full of rats. He bought a cat to catch rats, but it happened that the cat was thin and thin, so Lao She tied it up with a rope, not for fear that it would run away, but for fear that rats would touch it and eat it. Later, under the careful care of Mr. Lao She, the cat's diet gradually expanded. One morning, Lao She found that it had caught a half-dead mouse with two dead frogs beside it. Even frogs eat! Not the kui is a carnivore. Lao She lamented that he quit smoking, drinking, tea and meat, as if he had switched the fate of the cat.

Speaking of cats, it's time to talk about the question at the beginning of this article: Why are there no cats in the zodiac? Because in the era when the zodiac was born, there were no cats in people's lives. The answer is that simple.

-Year of mouse birth:

1936、 1948、 1960、 1972、 1984 、 1996、2008、2020

When the number of AD is divided by 12, the year with the remainder of 4 is the year of the rat.

The formula is: the number of years in AD ÷ 12= a quotient, and the remainder is 4.

For example: 2008÷ 12= quotient 167, and the remainder is 4. Therefore, 2008 is the year of the rat.

Note that the above is only a rough correspondence, because the Gregorian calendar and the elephant trunk calendar in China, which are widely used in the world, are two different calendars.

The year of the Rat is counted from beginning of spring in the twenty-four solar terms, because the year of the Zodiac is attached to the calendar year of the main branch, and the calendar year of the main branch is the calendar year method of the main branch. The same is true of the official almanac of past dynasties (that is, the Yellow Calendar). There is no doubt that the lunar calendar only uses branches to mark the year, which ranges from the first day of the first month to New Year's Eve. Lunar calendar and trunk calendar are two different calendars, which are different in the starting point of a year, the division rules of months and the number of days in each year. Due to the use of the Gregorian calendar after the Republic of China, many people, including a few so-called experts, lack calendar knowledge, so the two are often confused.

The trunk calendar is a calendar marked with 60 different heavenly stems and earthly branches, which is a unique solar calendar in China. It takes beginning of spring as the beginning of the year, and divides the year into twelve months with twenty-four solar terms. Every month contains two solar terms, and there is no leap month. The dry calendar is related to the periodic movement of the earth around the sun, which can reflect the climate change throughout the year. Since ancient times, the Ganzhi calendar has been widely recognized by the government and the people, and has been applied to astronomy, geomantic omen, numerology, choice and traditional Chinese medicine, and recorded in the official almanac of past dynasties (that is, the Yellow Calendar). Take Qing Dynasty official history book Qing Shi Lu as an example. The official editing years in the book are divided into beginning of spring: for example, Zhonghua Book Company photocopied Book 17 of Qing Shi Lu, Book 9 of Qianlong Shi Lu, with 573 pages, beginning of spring, 20071February 22 (Geng Xu), and Record is recorded as: "Geng Xu. This is the beginning of last spring. " See also the ninety-fifth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions in Qing Dynasty: "beginning of spring on December 18th of Jiayin year is December 19th of silver moon year". It is clearly pointed out here that the transition point of the dry calendar is in the year.