Not that I am a horoscope nut, but each Chinese year is represented by an animal. I was born under the rat symbol. Hence it was easy for the brain to link the following story to the year I was born in.
Long ago and far away, there was a tiny village in a kind of fertile valley in China. There were fifteen households of wet paddy farmers. There was only one precarious mountain trail linking it to a regional town. For at least two generations, they were bullied by a corrupt merchant who bought up all their surplus grain at lower price by force. As the Chinese ancients quoted:"The majestrate's gate is wide open, those with truth but no money do not walk in".
One autumn, the paddy heads were golden in the sunlight. A few aged and the young were at home. Every able bodied person was in the fields harvesting. One small child spotted a rat. Soon everyone was chasing it to the ancestral hall, which was the biggest building. It climbed to a cross beam, did not hide but looked benovelently at those gathered. As a shaft of the setting sun back lit it, everyone present saw clearly that there was a golden hair on its head.
That night, everyone in the village sat under a big tree. The oldest man sat there, fanning himself. As he listened to a few children talking about the rat with the golden hair, he stroked his snowy beard and nodded his head. He said, his grandfather had a golden hair on his forehead. During grandfather's youth and middle-age years, the village was free. There were volunteer guards and no one dared to subjugate them. Each man carried his harvest to town and those were the prosperous years.
The next day, the oldest man sent his two teenage grandsons to covertly scout out the lone trail from a wooden mountainside. Strangely, there were no bad characters guarding the trail. The able body men plotted and started early the following morning to bring unmilled rice camourflaged as charcoal to town. That evening, they came back with silver coins, shared fairly and each family hid the money wisely.
Each day after that, unmilled rice was carried out under fruits, vegetables, firewood and sold. They left a certain amount to sell to the bad merchant. A few drunk underlings came, bought the rice without the boss. Apparently, the crook was busy courting his fourth concubine.
Thus a new era started after the sighting of the golden hair rat. The villagers' fortune changed for the better. Year by year, the crook lost himself in wine, women and song. He gradually lost his power, one day he died of apoplexy. His eldest son was an opium addict. The second son was an alcoholic, the third one joined the military and never returned. The fourth one ran off, changed his name and worked for a living. The village was free again. Everyone blessed the day they saw the golden hair rat.
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