Kung Fu and Love

Kung Fu and Love
A great gift for Valentine's day or Chinese New Year

Monday, April 24, 2017

The Rat swimming in my subconscious

We are getting ready to move which fro whatever reason I have no interest in writing about. I will only mention that I have begun to question everything and everything is on the table.

Instead I will write about more mundane things.

Walking around a pond I happened to notice a rat at the edge of the water. It sensed I was there and dove under the water, but the water being clear.. i could see it swimming.

It swam quite well, which I knew about in theory and from footage on the internet, but I had never seen it with my own eyes. It swam our and out and then swam back to the edge. I wondered if it swam well enough to catch and eat fish. It was simultaneously disgusting and fascinating.

I thought about the rat as symbol... and a bunch of different rat notions went through my head. (Ratatouilee pops to mind now but not at that moment)

I just thought about how rats are pretty strong and resilient when you think about it, but though they are part of the Chinese Zodiac there is no Rat Kung Fu. In fact that would be seen as kind of stupid.. but why? I mean I might do white crane.. but I get a lot more opportunities to observe rats in their wild habitat and frankly they are largely out competing cranes.

Side Note: I have considered making Kung Fu that is more accessible to Americans (including Jook Sings) by just going with the Chinese Zodiac for Kung Fu animals instead of the 10 major Shaolin animals.  After all, every American Chinese restaurant will give out some calendar for free or some place mat with the zodiac. There is also the "Spring Roll" Punch. Chuen kuen (or penetrating punch) was often mispronounced by the ABC kids (whioe parents did restaurant work or even owned restaurants) as Chuen Guen, or spring roll. Now it might not sound very powerful but the straight punch does kind of remind you of a spring roll. I may have to run with this at one point with Restaurant super powers and all that.


But back to rats.


I heard that some of the gangs in Northern China used the Wu Shu or dark rat (or mouse) as a symbol. When I heard this I thought it was so lame. But come to think of it, rats get things done right?

There is also this Chinese cartoon that was allowed to play for about 10 minutes when I went to Red Oak summer camp before the counselors shut it off for good reason. 10 minutes was all it took. It was about some police cat. And the criminals were mice. (So like the opposite of mouse, the hero was the law and the cat)

It was so China of the 80's. This police cat showed up to a crime scene (this is a children's cartoon mind you) and of course didn't read rights (there are none) he just goes "Don't move" And proceeds to shoot a bunch of unarmed rats dead. Some of them push their comrades in front of the bullets to show the young children that there is no honor among thieves.

But it was just interesting because all of this was not only acceptable, but commendable. Like "Good job Police cat!"

Anyway... even though the rats were bad guys there and cowardly, it still shows that they are a force to be reckoned with. And of course there is master splinter.

Don;t get me wrong. I don;t want rats near me. They freak me out. In my childhood a couple of them jumped on me running into our section 8 apartments closet. and another one died in this plant right next to where I was playing.

But it's not like Tigers and Dragons are preferable to rats. And jut like that Buddhist New Years story goes with the rat being increased to three times the size during the parade of the animals, I mean if a rat was the same size as a tiger.. which one would win? Hard to say right?

Well enough of rats. I will try to write in this blog more often if only to practice writing.

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