Chinese show how to lead rat race


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送交者: 添风 于 2008-02-07, 16:36:14:

Chinese show how to lead rat race

Stuart Rintoul | February 08, 2008
MOST Australians when they think of rats do not think kindly. The word "plague" comes to mind, along with childhood stories of the unhappy town of Hamelin. They are generally considered to be dirty and treacherous and altogether nasty little rodents.
Not so among the Chinese, who have begun ringing in the Year of the Rat, celebrating its many virtues, shrewdness and intelligence among them.
First in the 12-year cycle of animals that appear in the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Rat is regarded by Chinese as a good time for hard work, renewal and prosperity. People born in the Year of the Rat are said to be leaders, pioneers and conquerors, ingenious and charming, ambitious and inventive, perceptive, charitable and romantic.
They also love to make a buck.
Famous Rats have included Galileo and Plato, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, Washington and Churchill, Mozart and Tchaikovsky, China's greatest poet Du Fu, Ming Dynasty general Qi Jiguang and Lu Su, an adviser for the Kingdom of Wu during China's Three Kingdoms era.
At Melbourne's Chinese Museum, crowded with the Millennium and Dai Loong dragons, Australia's most famous Chinese personality, Lord Mayor John So (Year of the Dog, "friendly and loyal"), said he expected the Year of the Rat to bring good fortune and prosperity.
Regard for the rat reflected Chinese optimism, he said. "We look at life very positively. Every animal symbolises something positive in life."
Although Westerners might have been unforgiving about the bubonic plague for the past 1500 years, and certainly since the Black Death wiped out 75 million people in the 14th century, the Chinese saw light and dark, yin and yang, in everything, even rats....




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