Introduction to “Niu Yan·Rumors”

This cau­tion­ary pic­ture book is based on a fable that has been wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed online in recent years, “How Did the Cow Die?” There’s also a ver­sion fea­tur­ing a don­key. The sto­ry­line is large­ly the same: what begins as a casu­al com­plaint from a cow (or don­key) is then embell­ished by word of mouth among the oth­er farm ani­mals, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing a delib­er­ate betray­al when it reach­es the ears of the own­er, the farmer, and in the orig­i­nal sto­ry, leads to fatal con­se­quences! The moral of this fable is often sum­ma­rized in the work­place as “be cau­tious in what you say and do,” such as avoid­ing com­plaints eas­i­ly. More broad­ly, it serves as a reminder not to believe rumors. In the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, when rumors are ram­pant, such sto­ries seem even more rel­e­vant.

How­ev­er, the cre­ation of the pic­ture book goes beyond sim­ply recre­at­ing the scenes of the orig­i­nal sto­ry. Instead, it presents the process of rumor spread in a very intu­itive way, attempt­ing to pro­vide com­par­a­tive solu­tions in reverse. There­fore, in terms of visu­al expres­sion, the nar­ra­tive is clev­er­ly pre­sent­ed with images that reflect each oth­er from top to bot­tom, which nat­u­ral­ly presents the effect of sto­ry rever­sal. It also suc­cess­ful­ly com­pares the cor­re­spond­ing process­es of “spread­ing rumors” and “debunk­ing rumors”, mak­ing the rumor trans­mis­sion mech­a­nism eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy. There­fore, when read­ing this book, read­ers can not only read to the end and then reverse it to read back to the begin­ning, but also com­pare the freeze frames of each rumor. Read­ers will find that in each rumor, the mes­sen­ger tends to exag­ger­ate the neg­a­tive aspects of the pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion and is more will­ing to add pure­ly per­son­al asso­ci­a­tions.

Although the illus­tra­tions in this book are pre­sent­ed in sil­hou­ette, the char­ac­ters in the sto­ry remain vivid and life­like, espe­cial­ly the cow, the pro­tag­o­nist, whose expres­sions are touch­ing. I believe young read­ers will love to join this visu­al­ly cre­ative “tele­phone game.” By read­ing in cir­cles and com­par­ing the top, bot­tom, and front, back, they will expe­ri­ence the spread of the “cow” rumor. Back in real life, they may even become the wise ones who put an end to the rumors.

Writ­ten in Bei­jing on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2022