"Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge"

What is your favorite animal? I will bet that your favorite animal falls neatly into one of our six animal groups: amphibians, birds, insects, fish, mammals, or reptiles. How convenient! How tidy! But what if we categorized animals differently? ... our categorizations are, after all, human constructs that we've imposed on the world to make sense out of it. In fact, other ways of organizing the animal kingdom do exist. For example, the "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge." How's that for a title?! This title represents an ancient Chinese taxonomy of animals. In other words, this is the order in which they categorized animals:

1) Those that belong to the Emperor
2) Embalmed ones
3) Those that are trained
4) Suckling pigs
5) Mermaids
6) Fabulous ones
7) Stray dogs
8) Those that are included in this classification
9) Those that tremble as if they were mad
10) Innumerable ones
11) Those drawn with a very fine camel hairbrush
12) Others
13) Those that have just broken a flower vase
14) Those that resemble flies from a distance

A couple of comments here. First of all, what in the world does #8 mean? Second, common sense would tell me that the category "other" would come at the very end. Hmm. Not so in this case. Finally, if we think that all people organize/categorize the world in the same way that we do here in white, middle-class America we are in for a rude awakening. People organize the world in ways that boggle the mind and frustrate our own categories. The world is a wonderful, fascinating and diverse place. And I just broke a flower vase! Doh.