Supply of information: Pan Yongrong (Guizhou Programme Consultant, PCD)
Written by May Tam (Communications Officer, PCD)
People depend on their harvests from the fields, but these food crops also attract animals that take a furtive share, like mice among the rice crop. Farmers tend to object to this, and resort to trying to exterminate the culprits. However, people and rodents do not have to be mortal enemies – there were times in ancient China when the farming practices allowed the two to cohabit in harmony and share the harvest together. Instead of exterminating the rodents as in modern times, the ancient practices accommodated them.
Legend has it that when people were first gathering into societies, they did not have cereals so the Jade Emperor of Heaven dropped two seeds from the sky for them, but they fell onto a steep cliff. One seed was cereals, the other was a weed. People tried to pick them up and plant them in their fields, but no one could succeed as the cliff was too tall and too steep. So people thought of the agile and witty little mouse, and sent it to climb up the cliff for the seeds. To everyone's surprise, the mouse fell as the mountain was really too steep. It lost its foothold half-way up. The mouse broke its back and had to crawl around like a hunchback from then on for generation after generation.
Just as the humans were giving up, the leech volunteered to get the seeds for them and succeeded. To return the leech's favour, the people agreed to its request that it could suck on their blood. The mouse saw all this and felt that it had been slighted. So it went to the people to reason with them. “This is totally unfair. I did not manage to pick up the seeds, but my back was broken in the attempt. How should you pay me back for that?” So the people left three grains of rice for the mouse, which turned out crops one better than the other. The people then regretted their action and took everything back from the mouse for themselves. The mouse was offended and angry. It considered that since people were not abiding by their words, it didn't need to, either. So it went to their fields and ate to its heart's content. But when it thought of the people's hard labour in the fields, it spared them some of the rice instead of consuming all, even though the people were promise breakers. This is the reason why today mice always leave some stalks and grains behind even when they are there to steal it all.
In this legend, both the people and the mouse were looking out for each other. In reality, there are many traditional practices handed down from before that prevent the harvest from being destroyed by infesting mice, such as to leave a portion of the harvest behind in the fields, so that when the mice are fed and satisfied, they will spare the rest of the crop and leave enough for the people. This method that works on the principle of harmony is preferable to vainly trying to cull all the mice. And when the mice are starving, their flocks will come in full force and inevitably turn the fields into battle grounds.
The sharing of harvest between people and mice is still practiced in some traditional villages in China. For example, some elderly farmers from Liufang village of Liping County, Guizhou Province, have such an accord with the mice there that they are able to nurture each other in the arms of nature together.