Week 6 Reading Diary B: Chinese Fairy Tales

Myth-Folklore Unit: Reading Diary B

(Yang Gui Fe)

Reading B:

1. The Little Hunting Dog

• Tiny knights, which as per usual, remind me of faeries. Story idea: depressed girl is visited by a group of tiny faeries who want to take her away to the land of the Fey. She is actually fae, and so she becomes the princess.
• Hunting falcons
• The faeries left behind a tiny hunting dog (Well, technically they're not actually faeries in this story, but I imagine them as faeries.)
• A sad ending. What if you sat or stepped on your tiny fairy friend?

2. Fox-Fire

• Fox blowing out the elixir of life
• A howling at the moon image
• Abilities to be invisible, see ghosts and devils, and things of the spirit world as a result of swallowing Fox-Fire.
• After many years, one's magic is taken away

3. The Talking Silver Foxes

• A mountain shaped like a tower, called Tower Mountain.
• Burning paper to get what you desire
• A cave full of talking foxes
• Get money now for something, or get rewarded more later. (In the story he chose the latter.)

4. Retribution

• Being haunted by a ghost, and eventually meeting the same sad fate as the ghost.

5. The Night on the Battlefield

• Taking apart one's body, reminds me of Frankenstein.
• The village was never there! It was all a ghostly apparition, really cool. Awesome story idea: someone wanders into a town, where things are a bit off. Something cares them, they run away to the next town, and discover that there is no town! Or what if the town is actually a town from the land of the Fey with a huge Fey party. It only appears every so often, that's how they saw it. 

6. The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away

• Being carried away by the winds and finding a young man.
• The suitor returning to win the lady's love
• Alas, the young man is an ogre, or some other fearsome creature. (Reverse Beauty and the Beast)

7. The Flying Ogre

• A messenger in the sky
• Living in a tree
• A rain of blood

8. The Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge

• Advised not to look into a bowl (or a box.)
• Mountain spirit

9. The Three Evils

• Three evils in a village: a dragon, a tiger, and an ordinary man (who is obviously not so ordinary.)

10. How the River God's Wedding Was Broken Off

• Every year a God looks for a wife. (What if it's a vampire, who looks for a human bride every year, but she always dies. Or a faerie king looks for a human bride once a year, but humans cannot live in the land of the fey, and so each of his bride's die. The new bride finds out about this and tries to escape!)

11. Yang Gui Fe

• A beguiling and enchanting woman. Maybe she is a sorceress or of the fey.
• Going to heaven, and hell, and the fairyland
• Sky-fairy
• A ring as a promise between two lovers. (Story idea: between a human and a fey, but then one of them looses the ring.)