The Year of the Metal Rat Brings Calamity to China Every 60 Years

[KuroShiro]

The Year of the Metal Rat Brings Calamity to China Every 60 Years

The Metal Rat brings widespread death every time it comes.

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/year-of-the-metal-rat-calamities-a00293-20200417

By Mario Alvaro Limos   |   Apr 17, 2020

 

Before Feng Shui experts declared 2020 was going to be a prosperous year, they should have consulted China’s history with the Year of the Metal Rat.

Or they could have just gone with the fact that the rat is considered a pest.

In a series of historical coincidences, the Metal Rat has brought widespread death and destruction of biblical proportions whenever it came every 60 years. The following historical events happened 60 years apart, all of which coincided with the Year of the Metal Rat.

 

The First Opium War (1839 to 1842)

The First Opium War was a result of Britain’s imposition of opium trade in China. British merchants sold opium in China, which was initially marketed as a traditional medicine to treat diseases. The downside is that it also has psychoactive ingredients that are highly addictive. When abused, opium affects the minds of its users.

Britain was smuggling as many as 30,000 chests of opium into China. When China attempted to halt all importation of opium, the British responded by bombarding the Chinese.

The First Opium War officially began in 1839, but its real onslaught started a year later in 1840, the Year of the Metal Rat. That year, the British sent its troops and Royal Navy to bombard China’s coasts. The Qing Dynasty was overpowered by the attacks, and could not mount a successful counter when much of its population was drugged.

The Opium Wars were so devastating that it led to China’s 100-year paralysis, which would later be called China’s Century of Humiliation.

The Metal Rat would return to China 60 years later and would bring even more destruction.

 

The Boxer Rebellion (1899 to 1901)

Not having fully recovered from the Opium Wars, the Qing Dynasty once again welcomed the Year of the Metal Rat in 1900 when the Boxer Rebellion was raging all over China.

When the eight nations, U.K., U.S., France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, decided to take Beijing, Empress Dowager Cixi supported a group of militants called Boxers, who were against the eight nations, and declared war.

The eight nations sent 20,000 troops to China, destroyed the Imperial Army, and executed anyone suspected of being a Boxer. They also forced China to pay 450 million taels of silver over the next 39 years as indemnity for the losses incurred by the eight nations during the rebellion.

Another 60 years later, China would succumb to famine and lose 36 million citizens in what is now known as the Great Chinese Famine.

The Great Chinese Famine (1960)

During the China’s Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao Zedong initiated the Four Pests Campaign, in which he called upon citizens to kill as many birds as they can, thinking that the birds were pests that ate the crops in the country’s farms. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.

Listing sparrows was a grave mistake.

Chinese around the country killed millions of Eurasian tree sparrows, destroyed their nests and eggs, and even banged metal pans to drive them away from trees so that they will die of exhaustion from flying.

 

When most of the sparrows in China were killed, a plague occurred. As it turned out, the sparrows were responsible for keeping the pest population under control. Mosquitoes, flies, and other crop pests such as caterpillars, locusts, and grasshoppers multiplied. The ecological imbalance caused by the sparrows’ deaths was so severe that it caused a nationwide famine.

Rice yields across China fell, plunging millions of people into starvation. According to the China Statistical Yearbook, crop production in China decreased from 200 million tons in 1958 to 143 million tons in 1960. When the Great Chinese Famine ended, as many as 45 million people died.

COVID-19 Pandemic (2020)

In the latest coming of the Year of the Metal Rat, China is once again faced with the greatest threat it has ever faced since the Opium Wars. COVID-19 was first detected in China’s Wuhan City in the province of Hubei.

Worldwide, the disease has infected more than two million people as of April 17, 2020, with 543,971 recoveries and 145,533 deaths.

 

 

As the ‘Year of The Metal Rat’ returns, China fears the coronavirus may trigger far more damage than anticipated

Now in 2020, exactly 60 years after the great famine that killed over 36 million people, China faces another behemoth that may as well change the way their nation, and even the world functions.

https://www.opindia.com/2020/04/china-coronavirus-pandemic-japan-usa-india-asean-manufacturing-2020-economy/

 

The coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the world and experts agree that by the time the pandemic is done with us, the world as we know it today would have changed forever. As it had happened with every major calamity, be it economical, pathogenic or geo-political, major disruption in the established order are bound to follow and this coronavirus pandemic, many believe, will be no different.

As the world suffers from a pandemic that many believe was originated from China, caused by China and was made worse by China’s policies, slowly, an anti-China wave is surging. Irrespective of conspiracy theories and sci-fi references, as the pandemic ravages supply chains, and brings economies to a halt, many nations have paused and taken note of how dependent they have been on China and how can they change the situation in future.

A report in the Nikkei Asian Review discusses the current scenario in the context of the Chinese astrological concept of the ‘Year of The Metal Rat’ or the Gang-Zi. 2020 is the reportedly the Gang-Zi, a time period that comes every 60 years and brings calamity to China.

 

Chinese astrologers believe that every time the ‘Metal Rat’ rolls, major history shaking incidents take place that change their nation forever.

As per the Nikkei report, 1840 was a ‘Year of The Metal Rat’, a year during the rule of the Qing dynasty, that saw the Opium War break out in China, bringing almost a century of misery and poverty.

60 years later, in 1900, another ‘Year of The Metal Rat’ followed and it saw the combined forces of the UK, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan and the then Austria-Hungary moved on Beijing to counter the ‘Siege of the International Legations’, an event that was triggered by the 1899 Boxers’ Rebellion.

The joined forced had marched from Tianjin to Peking (former name of Beijing) and had captured the city. The Qing empress had to flee the capital, only to be allowed entry two years later with humiliating peace terms. Eventually, the Qing dynasty was overthrown a few years later.

 

The next arrival of the ‘Year of The Metal Rat’ in 1960 brought with it a devastating famine to China, a result of Mao Zedong’s orders and communist policies. The great famine is believed to have caused 36 million deaths, though the Chinese official figures are far lower.

Now in 2020, exactly 60 years after the great famine that killed over 36 million people, China faces another behemoth that may as well change the way their nation, and even the world functions.

As the coronavirus ravages through populations, nation states are already re-thinking their policies, or dependency on China. Over the years, China had captured a major chunk of the world’s manufacturing operations.

Japan is one of the major nations that are keen to move their manufacturing operations out of China. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Japan had to be cancelled in March in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. on March 5, Japan PM Shinzo Abe chaired a meeting of the Japanese ‘Council of Investments for the Future’. That meeting, where Japan’s most powerful business houses and business lobbies were present, it was decided that they want high-value Japanese product manufacturing bases to ‘come home to Japan’.

 

“Due to the coronavirus, fewer products are coming from China to Japan. People are worried about our supply chains of the products that rely heavily on a single country for manufacturing. We should try to relocate high added value items to Japan. And for everything else, we should diversify to countries like those in ASEAN”, said Abe.

Since then, Japan has declared an economic package of over 2.2 billion USD to assist Japanese companies to shift their manufacturing base from China to Japan, or other Southeast Asian nations.

China was worried. On the very next day, as per the NAR report, Jinping held a meeting of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee and told his party leaders to prepare for the worst, not in as many words. Jinping reportedly told that it is time for “bottom-line thinking”, which means assuming the worst, and called for “preparedness in mind and work to cope with prolonged external environment changes.”

Not just Japan, the US has been very vocal against China ever since the pandemic broke, Through US President Trump has now stopped calling it a ‘Chinese Virus’, his government has made amply clear that they would like to see American companies shift their manufacturing base away from China, a call that aptly fits into their ‘America First’ policy. Recently, White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow stated that like Japan, the US should also pay the moving cost for US companies seeking to move out of China.

It was also reported that major Korean companies, including Hyundai and POSCO are in talks with the Indian government, keen to move their manufacturing bases out of China and away from the US-China trade war. Only last year, mobile giant Samsung had ended its production operations in China. In the same year, it had opened its largest manufacturing facility in India’s Noida.

The economic ramifications are only a part of China’s woes. As per the Nikkei report, an increasing number of experts, including Dr Zhong Nanshan believe that the current pandemic is only the first wave of the virus. He says that like the second wave of the Spanish Flu killed more people than the first wave in 1918-20, the coronavirus will return in a second wave, bringing far more deaths. He has stated that the coronavirus has already mutated and the death rates have reached 20 times higher than that of influenza.

The coming months will reveal a massive shift in the ways of the world as we know it.

 

 

Xi fears Japan-led manufacturing exodus from China

The year of the metal rat returns every 60 years -- and brings calamity with it

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Xi-fears-Japan-led-manufacturing-exodus-from-China

 

TOKYO -- Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has proposed building an economy that is less dependent on one country, China, so that the nation can better avoid supply chain disruptions.

The call touched off a heated debate in the Chinese political world.

In Zhongnanhai, the area in central Beijing where leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and the state government have their offices, "there are now serious concerns over foreign companies withdrawing from China," a Chinese economic source said. "What has particularly been talked about is the clause in Japan's emergency economic package that encourages (and funds) the re-establishment of supply chains."

 

Had the pandemic not struck, Chinese President Xi Jinping's maiden state visit to Japan would have been wrapped up by now with Xi proudly declaring a "new era" of Sino-Japanese relations. He would have cheered on Abe as Japan prepared for the next big event, the 2020 Olympics.

Instead, both Xi's trip and the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed, and Sino-Japanese relations find themselves at a crossroads.

 

Signals of Abe's new policy were visible as early as March 5.

Japan had finally been able to put the Diamond Princess cruise ship disaster behind it but was still snowed under by the challenge of preventing the virus's further spread.

On that date, coincidentally the same day the postponement of Xi's Japan visit was announced, the Japanese government held a meeting of the Council on Investments for the Future. Abe, who chairs the council, said he wanted high value-added product manufacturing bases to come home to Japan.

At the table were influential business leaders such as Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, the country's biggest business lobby better known as Keidanren.

"Due to the coronavirus, fewer products are coming from China to Japan," Abe said. "People are worried about our supply chains."

Of the products that rely heavily on a single country for manufacturing, "we should try to relocate high added value items to Japan," the leader said. "And for everything else, we should diversify to countries like those in ASEAN."

 

Abe's remarks were clear. They came as disruptions hit the procurement of auto parts and other products for which Japan relies on China, seriously impacting corporate Japan's activities.

And they asked for something more than the traditional "China plus one" concept, in which companies add a non-China location to diversify production.

Abe was forming a "shift away from China" policy.

With the nation transfixed by coronavirus coverage, the proposal failed to generate big headlines in Japan.

But China was watching carefully, perhaps wondering whether it was about to undergo an industrial hollowing-out like Japan once experienced.

Such a trend would shake the foundation of China's long-standing growth model.

In its emergency economic package adopted on April 7, the Japanese government called for the re-establishment of supply chains that have been hit by the virus's proliferation. It earmarked more than 240 billion yen (about $2.2 billion) in its supplementary budget plan for fiscal 2020 to assist domestic companies to move production back home or to diversify their production bases into Southeast Asia. It is a tidy sum of money.

 

The next day, April 8, China's Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top decision-making body, held a meeting in Beijing.

Speaking at the meeting, President Xi said that "as the pandemic continues its global spread, the world economy faces a mounting downside risk." He added, "Unstable and uncertain factors are notably increasing."

Xi, who doubles as the party's general secretary, stressed the need to stick to "bottom-line thinking" -- which means assuming the worst -- and called for "preparedness in mind and work to cope with prolonged external environment changes."

The seven-member Politburo Standing Committee usually meets once a week, and it is rare for the holding and content of these meetings to be reported.

Xi sounded the call to prepare for "a protracted battle" while assuming the worst.

There are talks in the U.S. regarding China dependency.

Larry Kudlow, chairman of the White House's National Economic Council, has expressed his intention to consider shouldering the relocation costs of American companies returning home from China.

It fits with President Donald Trump's "America first" agenda.

If the U.S. and Japan, the world's biggest and third-biggest economies respectively, move away from China, it will have a huge impact on the world's second-biggest economy.

 

One topic has now set tongues wagging in the world of Chinese intellectuals. According to the Chinese astrology chart, 2020 is the year of Geng-Zi, or the metal rat, which comes once every 60 years.

It is said that every time the year of the metal rat rolls around a big history-shaking incident takes place.

In 1840, during the Qing dynasty, the Opium War broke out, leading to China's stagnation for more than a century.

Sixty years later, in 1900, toward the end of the Qing dynasty, forces from an alliance of eight nations -- the U.K., U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan and Austria-Hungary -- moved from Tianjin to Beijing, an incident triggered by the Boxer Rebellion, which had started in 1899.

"55 Days at Peking" is an American film starring Charlton Heston and depicting the siege of the foreign legations' compounds in Peking, now known as Beijing, during the Boxer Rebellion.

The metal rat's next return, in 1960, coincided with a famine caused by the Great Leap Forward led by Mao Zedong, the founding father of "a new China," or the People's Republic of China.

Yang Jisheng, a former journalist for Xinhua News Agency who lost his foster father to the famine, later authored "Tombstone," a detailed reportage about the epic disaster.

Based on field work and interviews, Yang revealed that as many as 36 million people died of hunger during the Great Leap Forward, far more than China once announced.

 

What will this year's metal rat jinx be like for China?

The peak of China's coronavirus outbreak has passed. But Zhang Wenhong, the head of a coronavirus clinical expert team whose profile has been on the rise, has said a second round of infections will hit in November or later.

During the 1918-1920 Spanish flu pandemic, the second wave of infections was more serious than the first. No pandemic has been more deadly since then. Estimates are that 500 million people, a third of the planet's population, were infected and that 50 million died.

Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old medical doctor, has shined since 2003, when he played a major role in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

The new coronavirus has already mutated, and its death rate has reached levels up to 20 times higher than that for influenza, Zhong has warned.

The new virus emerged in China late last year and then spread globally. China's crackdown on information and social media posts regarding the outbreak through mid-January and its delayed initial response to the public health crisis ended up contributing to a catastrophe and sparking an international uproar.

Trump had been calling the coronavirus "the Chinese virus," although he has since stopped doing so.

Global public opinion will greatly affect the re-establishment of a post-virus world order. As things stand now, those moving to take the initiative are the U.S. and China.

In ancient China, bamboo strips were the main canvas for documents before the introduction of paper. They were called "green logs" because bamboo strips are green before they are cured and sewn into books.

Bamboo strips are official documents that are kept for posterity, and it was important for an emperor to inscribe his name on them.

If the scourge of the coronavirus were to drastically change the world order in the 21st century, will it be the U.S. or China that inscribes the bamboo strips? China cannot afford to lose.

Much will depend on how the U.S. and China rebuild their respective virus-hit economies. If major foreign companies withdraw from China, it will become a big drag on the Middle Kingdom's economic revival.

Edited April 29, 2020 by KuroShiro

[thelerner]

I don't know if I buy the Metal Rat theory of destruction, but learning about 1960 4 Pestilences campaign was sad.  How the destruction of sparrows(!) led to mass deprivation was eye opening. 

 

It's just hitting the presses that world wide insect populations have been plunging 1% a year.  Which is huge.  You don't hear distant dominoes falling, but when they get close, you can't stop them either. 

[freeform]

Rat years bring with it a new cycle. It’s the first of the 12 animals.

 

So often there’s a big change - and sometimes big changes are hard.

 

It being a metal rat year, places a greater burden on the lungs... 

 

Autumn would burden the lungs further... meaning the possibility of a second wave of the virus then...

[Earl Grey]

13 minutes ago, thelerner said:

I don't know if I buy the Metal Rat theory of destruction, but learning about 1960 4 Pestilences campaign was sad.  How the destruction of sparrows(!) led to mass deprivation was eye opening. 

 

It's just hitting the presses that world wide insect populations have been plunging 1% a year.  Which is huge.  You don't hear distant dominoes falling, but when they get close, you can't stop them either. 

Well, if we believe in siddhis and cultivation of jing, qi, and shen, dakinis, and all sorts including Taoist immortals who electrocute people or set things on fire, I don’t think their astrology, which is pretty good, to be too hard to believe as well.

[SirPalomides]

In case anyone failed to notice, the 19th and 20th centuries were one calamity after another. E.g. the Taiping rebellion- the most devastating war of the 19th century anywhere; the brutal war with Japan from 1937 on; the Cultural Revolution, etc. It takes quite a selective approach to single out metal rat, especially when 3 of the listed events began on earth pig years.

Edited April 29, 2020 by SirPalomides

[doc benway]

I’m a metal rat and struggle with some chronic lung disease. Just before Covid hit, a Tibetan friend warned this might be a challenging year for me.

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, KuroShiro said:

Before Feng Shui experts declared 2020 was going to be a prosperous year, they should have consulted China’s history with the Year of the Metal Rat.

 

Most so-called "Feng Shui experts" practice what I call toxic positivity (i.e. saying awesome things everybody wants to hear instead of actually doing any FS analysis, and/or in lieu of knowing any genuine FS to begin with).  They only mention something negative when their pronouncements are tied to the products they're selling to 'protect" from that negative thing.  

 

Check out what I wrote on January 22 (before the Chinese New Year) in my "Taoist trivia and memorabilia" thread though.  My FS analysis, started in November, was then ongoing, and by that date I knew what to expect and was jumping out of my skin with worry -- which I couldn't share with anyone, pretty much, no one would believe me, and that was the hardest part back then. 

 

 "Any new contagious disease that has a 7 day incubation period (i.e. can't be detected till a week after it's been contracted, because the person who's contracted it will remain asymptomatic and unaware of carrying it) will go global within 24 hours.   

 

Wash your hands often, eat your healthy foods, take your supplements and herbs, keep warm, well-ventilated, moderately active and use the rest of those common sense precautions.  And if you plan to travel by plane during Chunyun period, consider wearing a mask."   

 

(I wish I knew how to quote from one thread to a different one, but I don't, so I just copy and paste -- if you go to the original, you can see under that post it was never edited after January 22).    

        

[KuroShiro]

1 hour ago, steve said:

I’m a metal rat and struggle with some chronic lung disease. Just before Covid hit, a Tibetan friend warned this might be a challenging year for me.

 

If you don't have one yet find a good acupuncturist and get regular treatments.

[KuroShiro]

33 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

Most so-called "Feng Shui experts" practice what I call toxic positivity (i.e. saying awesome things everybody wants to hear instead of actually doing any FS analysis, and/or in lieu of knowing any genuine FS to begin with).  They only mention something negative when their pronouncements are tied to the products they're selling to 'protect" from that negative thing.  

 

Check out what I wrote on January 22 (before the Chinese New Year) in my "Taoist trivia and memorabilia" thread though.  My FS analysis, started in November, was then ongoing, and by that date I knew what to expect and was jumping out of my skin with worry -- which I couldn't share with anyone, pretty much, no one would believe me, and that was the hardest part back then. 

 

 "Any new contagious disease that has a 7 day incubation period (i.e. can't be detected till a week after it's been contracted, because the person who's contracted it will remain asymptomatic and unaware of carrying it) will go global within 24 hours.   

 

Wash your hands often, eat your healthy foods, take your supplements and herbs, keep warm, well-ventilated, moderately active and use the rest of those common sense precautions.  And if you plan to travel by plane during Chunyun period, consider wearing a mask."   

 

(I wish I knew how to quote from one thread to a different one, but I don't, so I just copy and paste -- if you go to the original, you can see under that post it was never edited after January 22).    

        

 

 

On 1/22/2020 at 7:05 PM, Taomeow said:

The traditional way to celebrate the Chinese New Year is with family and extended family, and then friends and acquaintances.  The whole clan gathered under the ancestral roof for the main feast and then everybody proceeded paying multiple happy visits during the following days and weeks.  It was easy enough to pull off when family members and friends lived in the same village or in the neighboring one, but times have changed -- people moved to live in far-away cities, foreign countries, across the oceans, yet the custom persisted, and many parents and grandparents in Asia still expect everybody to come celebrate the proper way, as a family.  Whether the offspring are obedient and filial, don't want to lose face, are genuinely homesick (many are, from what I gathered talking to quite a few Chinese Americans) and prepared to go to any lengths toward the yearly reunion with family and friends, many, very many are going to keep it up.  And among those with no family to visit, many will still take a traveling vacation. 

 

The travel season, known as Chunyun, begins about 15 days before Lunar New Year's Day and lasts for around 40 days.  The number of trips taken during this period is staggering.  In 2019 it was 2.9 billion.  In 2020 it is expected to be higher -- over 3 billion.  It has been called the largest annual human migration in the world.  I believe "human" is redundant in this context -- unless I missed something, no animal, bird, or insect migration I tried to look up even comes close.  May well be the largest migration of multicellular eukaryotes in the world.    

 

It was a time to rejoice for thousands of years, and still is -- with another modern caveat.  Any new contagious disease that has a 7 day incubation period (i.e. can't be detected till a week after it's been contracted, because the person who's contracted it will remain asymptomatic and unaware of carrying it) will go global within 24 hours.   

 

Wash your hands often, eat your healthy foods, take your supplements and herbs, keep warm, well-ventilated, moderately active and use the rest of those common sense precautions.  And if you plan to travel by plane during Chunyun period, consider wearing a mask.            

Edited April 29, 2020 by KuroShiro

[thelerner]

1 hour ago, Earl Grey said:

Well, if we believe in siddhis and cultivation of jing, qi, and shen, dakinis, and all sorts including Taoist immortals who electrocute people or set things on fire, I don’t think their astrology, which is pretty good, to be too hard to believe as well.

To quote Tonto as he and the Ranger were surrounded by hostile Indians..

'What do you mean, WE?..' 

[Earl Grey]

3 minutes ago, thelerner said:

To quote Tonto as he and the Ranger were surrounded by hostile Indians..

'What do you mean, WE?..' 

 

To respond as the Lone Ranger would: “You are Commanche; they are Apache.”

[thelerner]

Just now, Earl Grey said:

 

To respond as the Lone Ranger would: “You are Commanche; they are Apache.”

And Tonto answered back 'Close enough, White Man'. 

[Earl Grey]

6 hours ago, thelerner said:

And Tonto answered back 'Close enough, White Man'. 

And the Lone Ranger said in return, “They’d sooner deal with me than you because of history.”

[SirPalomides]

Speaking of the first Opium War:

 

Quote

A Hong Kong school has apologised after a teacher gave incorrect information to pupils during an online lesson on the first opium war, the 19th century conflict which resulted in China ceding Hong Kong Island to Britain.

The Education Bureau said the teacher’s retelling of the hostilities was “obviously untrue and unacceptable”, adding it would investigate the incident.

A video circulating on social media platforms this week showed a teacher, believed to be from Ho Lap Primary School in Tsz Wan Shan, telling a class that the conflict – which erupted in 1840 – was the result of Britain’s attempt to ban opium smoking in China.

In the three-minute video, the teacher said: “Britain wanted to attack China in an attempt to ban smoking … Because Britain had found back then many people in China were smoking and the problem was really serious.

 

 

“Therefore, they [Britain] initiated the opium war so as to destroy these items called opium.”

 

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3082292/hong-kong-teachers-history-lesson-first-opium-war

 

 

[damdao]

@Taomeow Did you employ some of the Bazi calculation methods? Or a different kind of analysis? 

[Taomeow]

7 minutes ago, damdao said:

@Taomeow Did you employ some of the Bazi calculation methods? Or a different kind of analysis? 

 

That too, of course, but primarily Xuan Kong Flying Stars feng shui.    

[ilumairen]

 

On 4/29/2020 at 12:47 PM, thelerner said:

You don't hear distant dominoes falling, but when they get close, you can't stop them either. 

 

Sure you can - if you knock one or two out of the chain. 

 

Which is easier said than done, when what would need be knocked out are things humans have determined are precious, and what (a general) we have come to expect and depend upon.