CHINESE NEW YEAR 2011
THE YEAR OF THE IRON RABBIT
“THE RABBIT IN THE BURROW”
3 Feb 2011
© Malvin Artley

Kung Hei Fat Choy, Everyone!

Time once again for the Chinese New Year. Of course, it hardly seems appropriate to send salutations given what is about to befall Queensland, but I can tell you there are better times ahead. What a year the Iron Tiger brought us! It has been a year of extremes in many ways and of many things done on a big scale, both human and natural, beneficent and disastrous. One would expect no less from the Iron Tiger - or any Tiger for that matter. We might be wooed into thinking, then, that the year to come would just have to be better, right? Rabbits are so cute and gentle, soft and unassuming, are they not? Doesn’t that mean that this will be a gentler year? Alas, ‘tis not to be! Rabbits on the whole are a gentler expression than Tigers to be sure, but Iron Rabbits? - well, just don’t back one into a corner. You might just get the shock of your life, much like the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail did at the Cave of Caerbannog. That was a white (Iron) rabbit – and we all know what happened there!

In all seriousness, though, as for the year ahead, lest one really believes the Rabbit to be meek and retiring, a look at past Iron Rabbit years reveals a different story. Rabbits are fighters for the underdog and are very brave in the face of danger. Typically, one sees uprisings against social injustice in such years (1951, 1891, 1831, 1771)...

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