china1 stack013

Text :

WHEN one of these felines took flight
and floated all the way to the moon
with a rabbit in her arms, one could
only concede that this country was
really worth one's interest. And thus
a whole collection of fraternal animals
came to the fore, led by Suen U-Kung,
the querulous and metaphysical monkey
whose shadow would follow me to Korea
and Japan. Gandhi once said that the
quality of a civilization can be measured
by the way it treats animals. I think he
meant not only "gently" or "without
cruelty": through the idea of reincar-
nation, he was evoking our fraternity
in the imaginary. Symbol-bearing animals,
beasts of the eastern zodiac (linked
precisely to the lunar calendar), each
representing an image of ourselves, a
part of us that we might not understand
without them.