# Depictions of Cats in China, and Strange Doings on the RMB **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 10, 2012, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/depictions-of-cats-in-china-and-strange-doings-on-the-rmb/612356 "2012-02-10T00:01:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/depictions-of-cats-in-china-and-strange-doings-on-the-rmb/612356/1 "2012-02-10T00:01:07Z")
[This interesting post shows many different depicitons of cats in Chinese culture, mainly from the pre-Communist era.](http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/05/chinese-cats.html) Now, a little linguistic note: 貓 (māo) means ‘cat’, 毛 (máo) means ‘hairy’, ‘fur’, or ‘coarse’, and also Mao as in Chairman Mao. Note the tone marks attached to the middle vowels: ‘māo’ is not pronounced the same as ‘máo’ and the Chinese, therefore, did not really have a Chairman Cat. They had a Chairman Hairy, instead, and weren’t they just [wild about him](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Just_Wild_About_Harry). [Of course, since when do linguistic niceties deter an artist?](http://www.studiolum.com/wang/chinese/qiu-jie-president-mao-cat.jpg) [And then we have the promised strange doings on the RMB](http://i.imgur.com/8XaWi.jpg), via [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/pi6ft/all_hail_mao/). (In case you don’t know, [RMB is Renminbi, the currency of Mainland (or Red) China](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi), which is now a light pink at best.) [This image is NSFW](http://i.imgur.com/jZdtZ.jpg) if you can see the [‘sex’ in the Ritz cracker](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/556/are-subliminal-messages-secretly-embedded-in-advertisements) and similar shenaningans.