Reading Notes: Chinese Fairy Tales
This week I chose Chinese Fairy Tales. The style of these stories threw me off a little bit. There was a lot of tragedy and odd things for a fairy tale. The most bizarre story was the Cave of Beasts. I suppose in Chinese culture, the man of the house receives the "best" first, thus I understand his anger when he finds out the children ate all of his duck eggs. But did he really need that many duck eggs to himself? The mother in the story reminds me of my own in terms of putting her children's needs first. This is the strangest story, though, because the father gets SO mad about these precious duck eggs that he tosses just two of his many daughters into the wild where they could have been eaten alive. Instead, they lucked out and trapped their potential predators and looted some valuables they found... to which their terrible father takes as his own when he finally decides he misses his daughters. I was waiting for some kind of karma to hit the father but they lived happily ever after. At least his daughters aren't aware how much of a piece of shit he is!
My favorite stories would have to be The Panther and Why the Dog and Cat are Enemies. It's hard to miss the clear likeness of The Panther to Little Red Riding Hood. Instead of the wolf devouring Little Red's grandmother and disguising himself as her, a panther eats the mother and son before disguising himself as the mother. Then the famous "Oh! what big eyes you have!" from the innocent, oblivious little girl. BUT, I like this story much better in that the two girls get help from strangers who pity their incessant crying in order to get revenge on the panther. It was definitely a fun Tom and Jerry type scenario.
Why the Dog and Cat are Enemies is a very fun story. I've never quite heard of a story explaining why the two animals really don't like each other in real life and this theory is really interesting. It sounds so accurate that the cat would take the credit for bringing their owner's beloved ring back while the dog gets the brunt of it. I have a cat and she's such an asshole. Love her, but seriously she's such a dickhead. I would love to write a little short story about her.
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