Chinese Fairy Tales Reading Notes Part A

 

This image is actually from a cave painting many years ago; however, when I saw it, I thought it could be a good representation of the daughter's hands on the cave walls after their father abandoned them.

Image from Cave Painting.

In one of my favorite readings from this Chinese Mythology section is titled The Cave of Beasts. Basically, the father found wild goose eggs while out one morning and he brought them home for him and his wife to enjoy. That night when the mother was cooking the eggs. Each daughter slowly woke up and found their mother cooking eggs to which she gave them each an egg. By the end of the night, the eggs were gone and the father was furious so he took his two youngest daughters to a cave far away to leave them to be eaten by wild animals. When a wolf and fox came home, they slept by the hearth and did not see the girls. The girls woke up to find the wolf and fox, so they kindled a fire and burned them alive. The father eventually came back for his daughters and they were rescued from the cave of jewel-like stones. The father collected the stones when he also collected his daughters and the family became very wealthy through the selling of the stones. Everyone lived happily ever after in the end. Personally, I did not like how the father was just able to come back to get his daughters after abandoning them to die and then becoming rich due to good fortune within the cave that was supposed to kill his daughters. If I am going to rewrite this story, I am going to change the plot. When the wolf and fox are in the hearth begging to be let out and offering jewels from their cave in exchange for their lives, the girls ignored them within this story. I would like to rewrite this so that the girls take their offer and then work with the wolf and fox for their own happy ending. The girls could take a few of the jewels and travel to a small neighboring town with the help of the wolf and fox so that they could all live out their days happily. I do not like the idea that the father could just waltz back into his daughters' lives and reap the benefits of his decision to kill them; therefore, when the father goes ack to look for his daughters, he will encounter the wolf and fox who are not too keen on humans in the first place. 

Bibliography: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).