top of page
Writer's pictureRachelle

An anecdote about a missing cat, recorded by Lu You 陸游 (1125-1209)

其孫女封崇國夫人者,謂之童夫人,蓋小名也。愛一獅貓,忽亡之,立限令臨安府訪求。及期,貓不獲,府為捕繫鄰居民家,且欲劾兵官。兵官惶恐,步行求貓。凡獅貓悉捕致,而皆非也。乃賂入宅老卒,詢其狀,圖百本,於茶肆張之。府尹因嬖人祈懇乃已。

[Qin Hui’s][1] granddaughter, Lady of Chongguo, had the sobriquet Kid Lady.[2] [She] adored a lion-cat and lost it unexpectedly. [She] set a deadline for the city council of Lin’an[3] to look for it. The deadline passed; the cat was still missing. The council seized common residents in the neighbourhood and intended to impeach the gendarmerie. Fretting about this, the gendarmes were run off their feet seeking the cat, getting hold of all lion-cats that could be found; yet none was the one. Then [they] bribed an old house servant [of the lady] to enquire about the cat’s look, having hundreds of copies [of its likeness] drawn and posted in teahouses. The case was only dropped after the head of the council had his concubine plead [with the lady].


* From Lu You 陸游 (1125-1209) Lao xuean biji 老學庵筆記 (Quan Song biji 全宋筆記 edition, Series 5, Vol. 8, edited by Li Changxian 李昌憲, Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, 2012), 3.33. See also the Chongwen shuju congshu 崇文書局叢書 edition: https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=85091&page=51.

[1] Qin Hui 秦檜 (1090-1155), a powerful statesman of the Song Dynasty, is one of the most infamous historical figures in Chinese popular culture for the part he played in the persecution and execution of the general Yue Fei 岳飛 (1103-1142), who dedicated himself to retrieving Song territories that had been lost to the Jurchens in the north. [2] This anecdote is retold in Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 (1574-1646) Yushi mingyan 喻世明言, a 17th-century collection of vernacular short stories. Elaborated and integrated into a short story about Qin Hui, the anecdote is used as evidence to show how privileged Qin Hui and his family were in those days. In this short story, Feng Menglong provides extra information to establish the historical context. For example, the granddaughter in question was entitled Lady of Chongguo at birth, and the incident of the missing cat took place when she was about six years old; see https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&file=47871&page=10. [3] Lin’an was then the capital city of the Song empire.



 

Copyright Declaration*:


The texts and images used on the website of Rachelle's Lab are either from the public domain (e.g. Wikipedia), databases with open data licenses (e.g. Shuhua diancang ziliao jiansuo xitong 書畫典藏資料檢索系統, National Palace Museum, Taipei), online libraries that permit reasonable use (e.g. ctext.org), or original work created for this website.


Although fair use of the website for private non-profit purposes is permitted, please note that the website of Rachelle's Lab and its content (including but not limited to translations, blog posts, images, videos, etc.) are protected under international copyright law. If you want to republish, distribute, or make derivative work based on the website content, please contact me, the copyright owner, to get written permission first and make sure to link to the corresponding page when you use it.


版權聲明:


本站所使用的圖片,皆出自公有領域(如維基)、開放數據庫(如臺北故宮博物院書畫典藏資料檢索系統)、允許合理引用的在線圖書館(如中國哲學電子化計劃)及本人創作。本站允許對網站內容進行個人的、非營利性質的合理使用。但請注意,本站及其內容(包括但不限於翻譯、博文、圖像、視頻等)受國際版權法保護。如需基於博客內容進行出版、傳播、製作衍生作品等,請務必先徵求作者(本人)書面許可,并在使用時附上本站鏈接,註明出處。


*Read more about copyright and permission here.


1 comment

Recent Posts

See All

1 Comment


Janine Nicol
Mar 06, 2023

Seems a reasonable and proportionate response. Any anecdotes about prosecuting the owners of dogs who terrorise their beloved felines?

Like
bottom of page