Reading Notes: Chinese Fairy Tales, Part A

Illustration of the Weaving Maiden by George H. Hood.
Source: Website.

• The Favorite of Fortune and the Child of Ill Luck (Link)
• Prince had a daughter with bad luck and when it came time for her to get married, she had her suitors line up so she could throw a ball of red silk at them and whoever caught it would be her husband
• Among the suitors lined up, there were princes and counts, but also a beggar with great luck (she knew this because of dragons crawling into his ears and out of his nose), so she threw him the silk ball and he caught it
• This angered her father, so she explained that she would likely obtain some of his luck, but the father wouldn't listen and made her leave
• The daughter left with the beggar and they went to his hut, living off the land, until the beggar decided to go find his fortune so they wouldn't be starving anymore
• The beggar was then gone for eighteen years and the daughter waited for his return as he promised
• When the beggar returned, he had become an emperor, so he returned to his wife but she didn't recognize him anymore
• He asked her what she had done while her husband was gone and if she wanted to marry someone else, but she answered that she waited for him and would be his wife until she dies
• Hearing how faithful she had been, the emperor revealed himself and brought her to his palace clothed in fancy garments
• They were happy about their new life, but since the daughter was still a child of ill luck, she died eighteen days later
• The Cave of the Beasts (Link)
• Introduces a family of seven daughters whose father found seven duck eggs while gathering wood one day
• He brought them home with intention of only him and his wife eating them, but that night while cooking them, the oldest daughter woke up and asked her mom what she was making, so she told her that she was making eggs and gave her one under the condition that she wouldn't tell her sisters
• Soon the second daughter woke up and asked the same thing, so the mom gave her one and told her not to tell her sisters, and so this continued until all the daughters got one egg and they were gone
• The next morning, the father angrily planned to take his daughters to the mountains, so he sneakily told them that he would take them to see their grandmother
• The older daughters suspected his plan and refused to go, but the younger ones believed him and went with him
• The father dropped them off by a mountain and said he would return but never did, so the young ones found a stone and rolled it to where they wanted to sleep
• The girls noticed once they moved the stone that it was blocking a cave with lots of precious stones and jewels that lit it up and belonged to a fox and wolf
• The girls went into the cave and saw two beds so they fell asleep on them
• When the fox and wolf returned, the wolf thought he smelled human flesh, but the fox said it was impossible so they fell asleep in kettles to stay warm
• The next morning, the girls found the fox and wolf and were scared, so they put the covers on the kettles with stones so they couldn't get out while building a fire beneath them until they died
• The girls remained in the cave until their father started to miss them and returned to bring them back
• When he got to the cave, he sat on the stone to rest and met up with his daughters and they brought all the precious stones and jewels home
• The Panther (Link)
• A widow told her two daughters to take care of their house while she went with her son to their grandmothers, so they agreed
• She met a panther on her way that asked where she was going, so she told it she was going to her mother's, but the panther begged her to rest
• The widow obliged, so the panther offered to comb her hair, but when it did it ripped off some of her skin and ate it, so she told it to stop, but it kept going until it devoured her and her son
• Afterwards, the panther dressed in the widow's clothes and laid the child's bones in her basket to return to her home
• The panther got to the widows home and called to her two daughters, but the daughters looked out at her and mentioned that her eyes, face, and feet were different
• The panther had excuses for everything, so the daughter let it in and saw that it was definitely not their mother, but didn't say anything
• That night, the daughters saw the panther eating the bones it brought and asked about it, but the panther said it was eating beets
• The girls relentlessly asked for some since they were hungry, so the panther eventually gave them each a finger
• Noticing it wasn't a beet, the girls decided they should escape before the panther ate them as well
• The girls ran to a tree and climbed it, calling to the panther to come out and climb up with them, but since the panther couldn't climb they decided to tie a rope to a basket and pull it up
• Once the basket was halfway up, the girls started swinging it against the side of the tree until the panther had to transform back and run away
• Now the girls were crying on their doorstep when a needle-vender walked by and asked what was wrong, so they explained that a panther was out for their family, and the vender gave them a pair of needles to stick in the arms of their chairs with the points upwards
• This continued as people passed by until they had a scorpion to hide in behind their hearth, an egg to lay under the ashes of their hearth, a turtle to put in their water-barrel, and two clubs to hang over their street door
• When the panther returned home, it sat on the chair and stabbed its arms, so it ran to the kitchen to light the hearth but was stung by the scorpion and the egg burst and blinded it, so it ran to the water-barrel to cool its hand and the turtle bit it off, and when trying to run away the clubs fell on its head and killed him
• Why Dog and Cat are Enemies (Link)
• Introduces a man and wife who had a lucky ring that provided them with enough to live on and sold it without knowing its value, so they grew poor
• They had a dog and cat who were also going hungry, so they came up with a plan to restore their owners' fortune
• The dog suggested getting the ring back, but the cat said it was locked away where no one could get it
• The dog then suggests for the cat to catch a mouse and force it to bite a hole through the chest to get the ring or else threaten to kill it, so it did
• The plan worked and they headed back with the ring, but the cat returned home much quicker since it could jump over houses and the dog had to run around them on the ground
• The owners agreed to give the cat enough to eat and care for it like a child since it brought the ring back, then beat and scolded the dog for not helping once it returned
• The cat did not say anything which angered the dog, so now they're enemies and the dog chases it whenever it sees one
• Yang Oerlang (Link)
• Ruler of Heaven's daughter came down to earth and married a mortal named Yang then had a son, but her father was angry and banished her to earth
• The son, Oerlang, was very gifted and could take the form of anything he wanted to, empty oceans, or move mountains
• He went to rescue his mother from the hills where she was banished to and on their journey stopped to rest on a ledge
• The mother said she was very thirsty, so Oerlang went to get her water, but when he returned only her skin and bones were left on the ledge
• There were still ten suns in the heavens at this time and since the daughter angered her father, her divine powers failed so that when she left the hills, the suns burned her to death
• Oerlang was heartbroken, so he took two mountains and crushed the suns between them until there was only one left
• The final sun hid from Oerlang under the leaves of a portulacca plant, but a worm revealed it
• As Oerlang was about to crush the last sun, the Ruler of the Heavens came to him and told him to spare the sun since earth needed it and told him since he rescued his mother, he could be a god and protect him in heaven, ruling over mortal good and evil and having power over devils/demons
• When the sun came out of hiding, it granted that the portulacca plant never fear sunshine and left it with white pearls out of gratitude; the worm however was dried out for his treachery any time he came out of the ground
• The Lady of the Moon (Link)
• Hou I was a hero and archer who was ordered by the Emperor to shoot at the ten suns since people couldn't not endure them on earth (he shot nine)
• Hou I also had a very fast horse, and one day took it to go hunting on Kunlun Mountain where he met the Queen-Mother of Jasper Sea who gave him an immortality herb
• He took it home and hid the herb, but one day when he was gone, his wife (Tschang O) ate some of it and floated up to the moon where she has lived in a castle ever since (now known as Lady of the Moon)
• In mid-autumn, an emperor was with two sorcerers who took his bamboo staff and threw it into the air to create a heavenly bridge
• The three climbed the bridge, saw the castle, and noticed a man in a cassia tree nearby chopping small branches with an ax
• One of the sorcerers explained that the branches of the tree would eventually grow so much that they would block the moon's irradiance, so they had to be trimmed every so often
• The three walked through the castle then and noticed basically everything was made of glass
• Soon enough, the Lady of the Moon came to them and said the emperor would have great fortune for being able to find her, so her attendants came and danced beneath the cassia tree
• When this ended, the three returned to earth and had the songs written down and sung with flutes
• The Girl with the Horse's Head or the Silkworm Goddess (Link)
• An old man went on a journey leaving his daughter and a horse at home, and the daughter missed him greatly so she told the horse she would marry it if he went and brought her father back home
• The horse ran away and found the father, so it brought him back home, and once they arrive, the horse tried to strike and bite the daughter
• The father was confused, so the daughter explained that she had told the horse she would marry it for bringing him back, so the father shot it and hung its skin to dry and told the daughter not to say anything
• One day when the daughter was walking with her friend, she kicked the hide saying that the horse deserved what happened, but it suddenly wrapped her up and took her away
• Her friend, horrified, ran away to tell the father and have everyone look for her, but they couldn't find her until days later they saw the girl hanging in the hide from a tree turning into a silkworm who wove a cocoon
• The friend helped the daughter out of the cocoon and took the woven silk to sell for a profit
• The daughter from then on appeared in the clouds riding her horse and told her relatives that she was assigned the task to watch over growing silkworms from heaven, so they built temples for her
• The Miserly Farmer (Link)
• A farmer brought sweet and fragrant pears to market to sell and was met by a bonze in tattered clothes who asked for a single pear
• The farmer refused, but resorted to anger and name-calling when the bonze wouldn't leave him alone
• An artisan nearby was tired of hearing the argument and bought the pear for the bonze so they would shut up
• The bonze then said he also had beautiful pears and invited everyone to share them with him
• He put the pear's pit that the artisan bought him in the ground, watered it, and everyone in the market watched it suddenly sprout a tree with plentiful bushels of pears
• He took the pears from the tree, passed them out to everyone, and once they were gone cut down the tree and walked away with it
• The farmer watched all this happen and was not paying attention to his cart, so once the bonze left, he looked back to see that his pears were gone and an axle of his cart had disappeared
• He ran after the bonze, knowing it was he who had done it, but couldn't find him anywhere and the market crowd laughed at him
• The King of the Ants (Link)
• Scholar wanders away from home and comes to a haunted house surrounded by a beautiful garden and decides to live there
• One evening, several hundred tiny knights came into the room with horses the size of flies and hunting falcons/dogs the size of gnats
• In one corner of the room, they had a large hunt and caught many birds and game the size of rice grains, so a procession of banners and several hundred more men came into another corner of the room with tents, covers, cooking utensils, etc.
• Soon a man in a scarlet hat a purple clothes arrived with thousands of men clearing the way ahead of him, and an army man told him there were fish in the "Purple Lake", which was really the saucer where the scholar kept his writing-ink
• The tiny people set up tents around the saucer and a banquet was prepared with music and dancing
• After the banquet, the man in scarlet and purple ordered his men to cast nets into the Purple Lake, so they did and caught thousands of fish which the man ordered his cook to prepare
• The man in scarlet and purple then decided to tease the scholar who was nearby, saying that he knows basically nothing and he's still the king, but the scholar devotes his life to reading and gets nowhere
• The scholar was then angry and tried to smash the people with a book, causing them to scatter and leave the house
• The scholar followed them to a huge ants' nest and built a fire to smoke them out