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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
The book is divided into sections by topic. First, 'Tales of Enchantment and Magic.' This section is where you'll find stories of people turning into animals (mostly tigers and fish), stories of dragons, mortals and gods and even battling crickets.
The second section, 'Tales of Folly and Greed' is self-explanatory where most of the tales revolve around people's loss of memory, foolish escapades, and people generally being taken advantage of. This part of the book definitely had a 'let-this-be-a-lesson-to-you' vibe.
Section three, titled, 'The Animal Kingdom' included tales about mice, of men changing into tigers, a giant using a person as tiger-bait, a faithful dog, and even a tale titled: Educated Frogs and Martial Ants.
Next was the section 'Women and Wives' and following that was 'Ghosts and Souls' where we read about former lives, crossing over to the spirit world, humans misleading ghosts, and reincarnation. The final section, 'Judges and Diplomats' with tales of clever judges and political strategy.
Overall, an interesting volume, and like all fairytales, there are some gruesome parts but also wisdom and humor. (I mean, I had no idea ghosts' biggest fear was human saliva!)
The mistress questioned the maid long and brutally until the girl, having admitted nothing, finally died of her injuries. (p. 150)
The soldier drew his sword, flourished it, and in a flash cut the prisoner's head off. It rolled several feet and was still turning when it exclaimed admiringly, "Some sharp sword." (p. 195)
Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies translated and edited by Moss Roberts contains a vast collection of fairy tales with a wide range of content materials. For example, there are depictions of magical transformations, ghosts, and parables. As is typical of fairy tales, the collection demonstrates elements of the supernatural while also providing examples of both criticisms and defenses of societal norms.
Moss Roberts includes an introduction to the collection that briefly illuminates how the contrasting philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism are supported and contested within the differing stories featured within the collection. This introduction acts as the main piece of informational text in the book. For most of the collection, there is not any paratext in the form of footnotes or endnotes. The sole exemption to the lack of footnotes can found in the final section, entitled "An Unofficial History of the Confucian Academy." The text is interspersed with illustrations from the Ming encyclopedia Compendium of Illustrations for the Three Orders in Heaven, Earth, and Man (1608) that match the content of the corresponding text. There is also a brief note detailing the process of the translations of the source materials at the end of the book.
I'm unable to express the entirety of my thoughts here in only English, so forgive me for the few, seemingly random Chinese words. A different language just doesn't seem to convey the same depth of intention and meaning, and I realize that even more so after reading this collection.
To put it bluntly, reading Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies in English is boring. I don't know how true the translations are to the original language, but as I translate them again into Chinese (Mandarin to be exact), I find them infinitely more interesting and poetic. Now, this might just be my choice of words when translating, but I also can't help thinking that the translation might have stripped away too much of the beauty of the original language.
I'm not unfamiliar with Asian folklore, myths and such so this collection containing a lot of 道理 (principles/reasoning) and 道德 (morals) isn't odd. However, it can be rather repetitive and at some parts, silly (which, to be fair, isn't unexpected). I didn't care for many of the shorter pieces too. So yeah, this collection wasn't all that enjoyable or interesting to me.
It wasn't really as great as I'd hope it'd be. I was expecting some of the myths/legends/folktales that I've read when I was younger. Such as Hou Yi and the Ten Suns, Tale of the White Snake, Butterfly Lovers, and more.
Though the stories do contain moral teachings, but the way the stories were written/translated are somewhat dry. I think some sarcasm/humor that was portrayed by the original authors, got lost in translation.