there is a story in "Hanshu" telling of a rich man, who being a lover of s and had a large collection. Among them was a rare vase made of jade. The vase of exquisite workmanship and of historical value and he loved it dearly. One night he noticed a mouse passing near the precious vase. The mouse jumped into the vase and was trying to eat some food which the man had carelessly left there. The sigh infuriated the man and in a fit of rage he threw a stone at the mouse. For sure, the mouse was killed, but the precious vase was broken also. The loss of the vase pained the man GREatly and he deeply regretted his own thoughtlessness, which bought him this unrecoverable loss. He now realized that any one, who cares for the present and overlooks consequences is apt to bring disasters upon himself. So he exclaimed to warn people by saying do not burn you house to get rid of a mouse.
In the Chinese classic 《Chuangtze》, there is a legend like this:
Once upon a time, a gigantic fish named Kun lived in the northern sea. No one knew how large it actually was. This fish could change itself into the enormous bird called Peng (roc), measuring thousands of kilometers in length. When the bird was spreading its wings, it looked like huge clouds in the sky. It could, in one stretch, fly from the northern sea to the southern sea on the other side of the globe and soaring up to 90000 li (45000 kilometers) in the heaven.
the bird can surely fly over a long distance without stop. Now people use this idiom to with others have a long career or a bright future.
Tiresias was a blind, darkseeing prophet(先知) of Thebes. He was struck with blindness in his youth, because he had spied unwittingly on the goddess Athena. He was wandering in the woods one day when quite unexpectedly he saw anaked maiden bathing in a placid lake. Little did he know that he had offended the virgin goddess. Taken unaware and scarlet with wrath(愤怒) , the goddess exclaimed that whoever had the boldness to steal a glance at her naked body was doomed to perpetual(永久的) blindness. But when she learned later that the offence was unintentional, it was too late for her to take back what she had said. Taking pity on the poor youth for the loss of his sight, she obtained from Zeus an exceptional long life for him, and from Apollo a divine(神圣的) power of prophecy. Besides, she provided him with a marvellous sharpness of ear, so that he could understand the voices of all birds. And she filled his mind with mystic knowledge of things past and of things to come. In short she gave him quite an amount of her own wisdom. He was the first to recognise and welcome Dionysus, god of feast and wine, on the The ban land. When the infant Heracles caught Hera's two serpents(巨蛇) in its hands, it was Tiresias who cast the child's fortune and revealed the divine origin and destiny of the boy. When Oedipus abused Tiresias as having had a hand in the murder of Laius, Tiresias had the fearless courage to tell the truth that Oedipus was the murderer. Even in the lower world he continued to prophesy. There he helped Odysseus when the hero came to him for advice. Alive, he was highly respected by all;dead, he enjoyed the generous air and rosy light in the land of the Blest.