Cultural Symbolism of the Rat

Rat although the reputation is not good, the appearance is not pleasing to the eye, but also fell into a "rat across the street, everyone shouting" of the ancient curse, but from the social, folklore and cultural point of view, it has long been out of the body, from a vicious evil spirit, evolved out of an incomparable spirit, intelligent and mysterious little creature.

China's folk as early as a few thousand years ago, the so-called "four", "five" of the primitive worship of animals, that is, the fox, weasel, moles, rats, snakes, a reflection of the fear of the psychological, the people generally think that these animals have People generally believe that these animals have extraordinary spirituality, representing the will of heaven and ghosts and gods. The rat is on the list again, and it can be seen that the rat is really entangled with human life inextricably, and the rat culture is naturally presented in every aspect of human daily life without disguise, and the rat culture makes the rat become more and more lovely and mysterious.

The first symbolism of the rat is spirituality, which includes both its resourcefulness and its psychic performance.

The rat is sensitive to smell, timid and suspicious, high alertness, plus its body is very dexterous, through the wall, running as if flying, and it also has two other sudden instincts: from dozens of meters or even hundreds of meters in the air, the roof of the building attached to the ground, turn around, gasp for a while will be like nothing as to do what they do, absolutely no fear of life in pieces; it is not an aquatic animal, and there is no strong swimming instincts, however, narrow and narrow, but also the ability to swim. Although it is not an aquatic animal, there is no strong swimming skills, but narrow ditches and shallow ponds can not stop it, in order to survive, it can be a breath of water underwater drilling several meters away (more than 10 times the length of their own distance) in their own unharmed. So to fall dead or drowned rats that can really be a bit of a waste of effort.

People often use "more than a mouse" to describe someone's shrewd wit, the rat's wit to become an analogous standard, it can be seen that the wit has been on a considerable grade, just as people describe the excellent quality of the sedan must say "better than Mercedes-Benz! ", not "better than the Volga". Similarly, to describe a person's action quickly, and adapt to the times, we also often say that he is "as fickle as a mouse."

Folk also believe that the rat nature of psychic, can foretell good and bad luck. In fact, the rat was born in nature, long in nature, the natural world is going to happen such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, locusts, etc. to make a certain line branch reaction is very normal, which is the earth's biology has some special instincts, just some limited to the human knowledge of their own, has not yet been able to reveal its mysterious and regular just. On the eve of the Tangshan earthquake, people were surprised to find that the rats to the outskirts of the scurrying, or three or five gangs huddled in the road, the street and other relatively empty places, and unknown signs suggesting what. Similar things must have happened many times in the ancient times, so the rats became psychic gods in the minds of human beings. We can get a glimpse of this through the interpretation of Zhou Gong analyzing the dream off the rat.

In life, everyone dreams. There are all sorts of things that appear in dreams. If you dream of rats, is it happy or sad or blessing or misfortune? As the saying goes, "It's a blessing not a curse, it's a curse that can't be avoided." Or and listen to the ancient Zhou Dynasty King Wen how to say:

If you dream of muskrat, career success. If you dream of a lot of muskrats, difficulties and misfortunes are coming your way.

If you dream of rats, you will make too many enemies. A married woman dreaming of holding a domesticated rat in her hand, will have a child. To dream of catching rats, will make dishonest friends. To dream of catching rats, will be plotted against by enemies. To dream of a cat catching a mouse, is a blessing; enemies will kill each other, and both will perish. To dream of dead mice, good luck. To dream of a lot of rats, failures will keep occurring. To dream of rats making holes in one's lodgings, the house will be burglarized. For a man to dream that rats are biting him, calamity will be averted. For a doctor to dream of rats, there will be an infectious disease in his place of residence.

To dream of a squirrel is to gain something by hard work. A woman dreaming of a squirrel will be separated from her husband. A deportee dreaming of a squirrel will achieve his goal and return to his homeland. Traveling will be comfortable and business will be successful. To dream of killing a squirrel, is an ill omen of disaster. To dream of catching a squirrel, or holding one in one's hand, is an auspicious omen, and one will find hidden treasure. To dream of a squirrel biting one's self, and to disagree with a friend on a major issue. A farmer dreaming of a squirrel will have a good harvest.

In a nutshell, "A rat fights with an official, and a rat bites a man without seeking gain", and "A rat walks away with a good deed, and a cat catches a rat with a good fortune."

The second symbolism of the rat is strong vitality. One is that it has strong fertility, high survival rate, such as a female rat in the natural state of each tire can produce 5-10 young rats, up to 24, the gestation period of only 21 days, female rats in the delivery of the same day can be conceived again, the young rats after 30-40 days of development and maturity, in which the females to join the ranks of the reproduction of offspring. In this way, female rats can give birth to about 5,000 children a year, as for grandchildren, granddaughters, great-grandchildren, great-grandchildren have been too many to count. According to research, the rat mother body contains a unique chemical substance that can stimulate male rats to forever fall under its "pomegranate skirt", which is probably one of the reasons why the rat world can be born and raised, so the folk will be the children of the group of good mothers jokingly referred to as "rat tires" or "rat belly". The "rat belly", a metaphor for its fertility is very strong.

Mice have a high survival rate, long life, such as not encountered natural enemies of the cat attack or human large-scale culling operations, most of them can enjoy a peaceful old age, the end of life, and full of grandchildren, which is unattainable for other animals.

In the past, the Chinese had a civil society organization, which is now known as the "Mouse Club" and was banned. It was originally a form of mutual assistance between the people, members pay a certain amount of dues, and then go to introduce new members to join. Due to the large number of members, the membership fee is quite substantial, and this fee is used for individual members. Each member has the opportunity to obtain this kind of funding, but the study of who first and who needs to be in accordance with certain procedures or lottery to decide, the principle is to focus on the community's idle funds in a short period of time so that a small number of lucky members to get rich first, members of the emergency in case of urgent need of money, you can also put forward a request for special funding by the Society to discuss the decision. This was originally some protection for the people is the benefit, but due to the specific operation process, because the head of the club holds a large amount of money, a large number of power, often from which to make personal gains, and thus gradually evolved into a financial exploitation, and with obvious triad colors of the gangs, by the government expressly prohibited, and the way to benefit from it, in fact, has been the bank's zero deposits and loan installment payments to obtain, there is no need to exist. There is really no need for them to exist. This kind of gang is based on the introduction of members to join as the basis for development, the more the introduction of the more their own profits, so many people rely on lobbying others to join the club to earn a "referral fee" to make a fortune.

Where there is such a "will" or "society" exists, the members of the night will go around, or mobilize others to join, or participate in the organization of the party, the law of this activity and the habits of rats and day and night out of the same; and members of the change two, two to four, four to eight. Two to four, four to eight ...... Geometric multiplication of the situation, which is also very similar to the extraordinary reproductive power of rats, so people call it figuratively "rat club." In recent years in the mainland there is a trend of illegal pyramid schemes, the letter of association, chain letters, etc., most of which are the old "rat club" replica.

The third symbolism of the rat is the exquisite smallness, the end of the world. The rat was born with a small and delicate body, like to jump up and down, can not be associated with the word "big". China's first poetry collection, the Classic of Poetry, there is a piece called "Shuo rat" is the corrupt officials compared to the big rats, not to say that there is really such a big rat; the ancient book "Han Shi Wai Zhuan" in the "social rat" piece, the same is also a rat to the big analogy:

Duke of Qi Jing asked Yan Zi: "What is the most fearful of being a human being?"

Yanzi laughed and said seriously, "The social rat hides in the land temple and runs out just to steal food. People want to catch it, but they are afraid of destroying the artifacts in the land temple and offending the land lord to get retribution, so they can do nothing with it. There are such social rats around the monarch now, may the monarch stop sheltering them."

This is Yanzi borrowing the rat to tell the Duke of Qi Jing the way to rule the country. As far as the metaphor of the rat is concerned. Always with insignificant, no need to mention together, such as rat theft dog theft refers to the general "small thief", "the old book of Tang Dynasty - Xiao Milling biography" in the description of the Sui dynasty in the last year of the social chaos, said: "Since the Sui dynasty WeiJie, YuXian divided, small is a rat theft dog theft, the big is a whopping tiger distance. " (Since the end of the Sui Dynasty, the world is in great chaos, the group of male and female, thieves and robbers in the second, cut off the land of the king for the most serious harm.)

And then the mouse skill refers to the carving of small skills. Xunzi - persuade learning said: "flying snake without feet and fly, wu rat five skills and poor," literally meaning that although the flying snake has no feet, but can run like flying, wu rat although there are a variety of skills but it is difficult to show, the implication is that proficient in a skill Enough to show you, if you are greedy, not fine, only to learn a little entry point kung fu, even if it will be more than not much use. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.

Others, such as "rat", "rat generation", etc. have the same meaning, and implies that there is contempt, look down on the pejorative. During the Three Kingdoms period, Wang Yun hated Hu Wencai and Yang Xiu of Liangzhou and deliberately said in public, "What do the rats of Guandong want to do?" (What do these two Guandong rats want to do?) to express his dissatisfaction.

In addition, because of the ferocity of the rat's teeth, the need to constantly grind their teeth to maintain their length, people often use the "rat's teeth sparrow defense" is a metaphor for those who like to show off their tongue to move the right and wrong lost.