I n the dim past, even before the Ch’in and the Han
dynasties,1
there lived a cave chief of southern China by the
name of Wu. As was the custom in those days, Chief Wu had
taken two wives. Each wife in their turn had presented Wu
with a baby daughter. But one of the wives sickened and died,
and not too many days after that Chief Wu took to his bed
and died too.
Yeh-Shen, the little orphan, grew to girlhood in her
stepmother’s home. She was a bright child and lovely too,
with skin as smooth as ivory and dark pools for eyes. Her
stepmother was jealous of all this beauty and goodness, for her own daughter was not pretty at all. So in her displeasure, she
gave poor Yeh-Shen the heaviest and most unpleasant chores.
The only friend that Yeh-Shen had to her name was a fish
she had caught and raised. It was a beautiful fish with golden
eyes, and every day it would come out of the water and rest its
head on the bank of the pond, waiting for Yeh-Shen to feed it.
Stepmother gave Yeh-Shen little enough food for herself, but
the orphan child always found something to share with her
fish, which grew to enormous size.
Review lines 1–20. What elements of folk tales can you identify in these lines?