The Rats The Cat And The Thieves

Miranda warned Auto as she put on her apron, “I will give you away.” Miranda threatened to send Auto, a Siamese cat, away after she wrongly accused him of stealing food at night. He needed assistance because he couldn’t possibly look into the situation on his own. Who will help him? He made the decision to approach his foes, the rats, for assistance in clearing his name because he had no idea who had stolen the food. When she threatened to give him away, Miranda meant it seriously. Auto is running out of time because food has been stolen three days in a row and the thief left the kitchen floor dirty. Are the rats going to believe Auto’s story? Why should the rats help an adversary? What if he harms them? How will Auto convince them that he is telling the truth? Will Auto and the rats put the past behind them and look into the situation? Or, will the rats simply ignore Auto’s pleading for assistance and mind their own business?

Miranda warned Auto as she put on her apron, "I will give you away." Miranda threatened to send Auto, a Siamese cat, away after she wrongly accused him of stealing food at night. He needed assistance because he couldn't possibly look into the situation on his own. Who will help him? He made the decision to approach his foes, the rats, for assistance in clearing his name because he had no idea who had stolen the food. When she threatened to give him away, Miranda meant it seriously. Auto is running out of time because food has been stolen three days in a row and the thief left the kitchen floor dirty. Are the rats going to believe Auto's story? Why should the rats help an adversary? What if he harms them? How will Auto convince them that he is telling the truth? Will Auto and the rats put the past behind them and look into the situation? Or, will the rats simply ignore Auto's pleading for assistance and mind their own business?

Rats, Cats, Rogues, and Heroes reveals China's history and culture through the eyes of ordinary men and women using an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates history, anthropology, folk studies, and literature to examine the sociocultural and symbolic worlds of gangsters, sorcerers, and prostitutes in late imperial and modern China.

In the street names of Hong Kong, a rich history of the city can be found. The authors, in this illustrated book, explore that history as they explain the origins and meanings of those names. Through their exhaustive research, Signs from a Colonial Era provides the stories behind the well-known streets and those that are obscure and puzzling. But a few have resisted their efforts, so there is a chapter of mysteries to intrigue and challenge the reader. This is a book to be read in two ways. From the front you can find all the streets named after royalty, or governors, or other groups such as taipans, and see the naming of streets as a narrative of Hong Kong's development and society. In the other direction, starting from the index, it can be used as a reference book to find the answers to those names that have long puzzled you. The bilingual author team gives the Chinese street names, exploring those that were just chosen to sound like the English name and sometimes changed to avoid unfortunate Cantonese meanings, and those others for which the Chinese name has no connection with the English one. This is a book for everyone who has ever puzzled over a street name as they explore Hong Kong.

In literatures worldwide, animal fables have been analyzed for their revealingly anthropomorphic views, but until now little attention has been given to the animal tales of China. The complex, competitive relationship between rodents (vilified as thieves of grain) and the felines with whom they are perennially at war is explored in this presentation of Chinese tales about cats and mice. Master translator Wilt Idema situates them in an overview of animal tales in world literature, in the Chinese literary tradition as a whole, and within Chinese imaginative depictions of animals. The tales demonstrate the animals’ symbolism and their unusually prominent—and verbal—role in the stories. These readings depict cats and mice in conflict, in marital bonds, and in litigation—most centrally in a legal case of a mouse against a cat in the underworld court of King Yama. Many of the stories adopt the perspective of the mice as animals merely trying to survive, while also recognizing that cats are natural hunters. This entertaining volume will appeal to readers interested in Chinese literature and society, comparative literature, and posthumanist consideration of human-animal relations.