Fox Fake Tiger Power version 1

Informant: Anonymous, 20, F

Date Collected: 5/19/14

Genre: Proverb

Informant Data: The informant was born and raised in a suburb near Dallas, Texas. She currently attends Dartmouth College and lives in Plano, Texas. Her parents are first generation immigrants from China, and she speaks attended Chinese school for many years and speaks some Chinese at home. She has also taken up to Chinese 4 at Dartmouth College. She doesn't remember where she first heard this proverb, but thinks it may have been a story told in Chinese school. She is a member of the Dartmouth Chinese Culture Society. This proverb was collected through an interview at a DCCS meeting.

Text/Texture 

Chinese: 狐假虎威 (hǔ jiǎ hǔ wēi)

Literal Translation: Fox fake tiger power

Free Translation: There was a fox in the forest who wasn't very impressive. He saw that other people feared the tiger, so he followed the tiger around and used the tiger's impressiveness so that other people thought that he was fearsome too. The fox was trying to gain power by riding off of his powerful connections. 

Context: The informant felt that this proverb was used in a negative light, to tell people not to use someone else's power to have fake power over others.

Meaning/Interpretation: This proverb represents a Chinese cultural value of taking