One day Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi asked his student: where did the custom of naming years according to twelve animals come from, and what does the book say about that? The student, however, could not answer, although references to the animal reckoning system in Chinese sources date back to the beginning of our era.
The student did not know the legend that was told among the people. According to this legend, recorded in the coastal province of Zhejiang, the count of years by animals was established by the supreme ruler himself - the Jade Sovereign. He gathered the animals in his palace and chose twelve of them. But a heated argument flared up only when it was necessary to put them in order. A cunning mouse deceived everyone, having managed to prove that she is the largest among animals, even more than an ox. The fairy tale “On how animals began to count the years” opens our collection.
Not only the Chinese tried to find an explanation why the counting of years begins with a mouse. Back in the 11th century, a hundred years before Zhu Xi, the famous compiler of the first dictionary of Turkic dialects, Mahmud of Kashgar, wrote down a Turkic legend about how a certain king ordered to drive animals to the river and see which of them would swim to the other side faster. The first was a mouse. An ox, a leopard, a hare, a dragon, a snake, a horse, a sheep, a monkey, a chicken, a dog and a pig sailed after her. In this order, they gave the names to the years of the twelve-year cycle, so that it would be easier to remember them.
In the Turkic-Mongolian legend, known to the Buryats and Kirghiz and closer to the Chinese, the mouse also outwitted all the animals. It is very possible that the Chinese borrowed the entire animal cycle from the ancient Turkic-Mongolian tribes. Only, unlike them, among the Chinese, the calculation of time by animals has never been of an official nature. Soothsayers used it, calculating, for example, using special tables, whether the marriage would be happy if the groom was born in the year of the monkey, and the bride in the year of the sheep. Some Chinese beliefs and customs are also associated with the animal cycle: a person born in the year of the rooster should not have eaten chicken.
It is also possible to assume that the Chinese borrowed the entire animal cycle from their neighbors by comparing ancient Chinese ideas about animals with medieval ones.
Like the legend of the animal cycle, other animal tales recorded among the Chinese are built on the explanation of the characteristics of animals, the origin of their habits or appearance. They tell why dogs and cats fight, why crab is flattened, or why geese don't eat pork.
Fairy tales of this kind, called etiological in science, are being replaced by funny stories about the tricks of animals, the cunning and resourcefulness of a small beast in front of a big beast, which, according to fairy-tale logic, will certainly turn out to be fools. Remember at least our famous Lisa Patrikeevna, who fools a wolf, a bear and a lion, or a cunning hare - a folklore hero of Africans and residents of Southeast Asia. Among the Chinese, however, the cycles of fairy tales about the ingenious tricks of animals did not develop, since the development of fairy tales about animals stopped, apparently, even in ancient times. In any case, in the catalog of Chinese fairy tales, compiled by the German scientist W. Eberhard in 1937, there are only seven stories about animals. Now, thanks to the records of recent years, this figure can be increased three to four times. The paucity of fairy tales about animals in China, perhaps, is connected with the extremely early transition of the Chinese to agriculture and the neglect of hunting, as well as with the poverty of the fauna in China, where there are no uncultivated lands in densely populated areas, let alone forests.
The few tales about animals that have survived among the Chinese have come down to us in a greatly altered form. How the wind weathers the sandstones for centuries and applies grain by grain new land, so time destroyed and changed the ancient basis of many plots. The fantastic was replaced by the familiar, the miraculous was replaced by the ordinary. How the plot changed, we can trace at least on a fairy tale about a dog and a cat. The Chinese version of this tale (“Like a dog and a cat began to quarrel”), placed in our collection, has already been modernized: a treasure was lost from the poor, it was stolen by a merchant. The dog and the cat decided to help the owners and went in search. There lived a merchant across the river, and since cats cannot swim, the dog not only had to drag the cat on itself, but also dive for the chest, which she dropped into the river on her way back. Upon her return, the cat took all the credit for herself. Since then, there has been a feud between them.
The ancient basis of the plot can be restored by comparing its different versions. The most archaic version is recorded among the Mongols. In a Mongolian fairy tale, a cat and a dog steal a treasure from the very lord of the underworld, where they get through the sea. In ancient times, it was believed that the underworld was separated from the human world by water. In more modern version, recorded among the Chinese people of Miao, who live in southwestern China, instead of the ruler of the underworld, some kind of king appears, whose possessions are located across the river. The Chinese version retains, as it were, the same plot scheme: the animals cross the river, where the thief (or owner) of the treasure lives. But here he is no longer the lord of the underworld, but a simple merchant.
Fairy tales about tigers - kidnappers of girls are widespread in China. The tiger was revered by the Chinese as the king of beasts. By the holiday of the beginning of summer in China, amulets were specially sewn - bags or pillows for fragrant and medicinal herbs, most often they were given the shape of a tiger. It was believed that the tiger protects children from reptiles and poisonous insects, which appear in abundance at the beginning of summer. Moreover, on the forehead of a toy tiger, the sign “van” - “king” was certainly drawn in ink. According to ancient beliefs, the tiger, as a totem animal, had the right to marital relations with the people of "his tribe." On a bronze vessel from the end of the second millennium BC, for example, a man is depicted in the mighty embrace of a tigress. The story of a tiger who married a woman was also popular in medieval fairy tales. In fairy tales recorded in our time, this plot has already been modified. For example, in the fairy tale “How the Tiger Stole the Bride”, the tiger kidnaps the bride from the wedding palanquin, but it is not clear whether she became his wife.
Fairy tales occupy the greatest place in the fairy tale repertoire of the Chinese and, accordingly, in our collection. They break up into separate cycles: stories about the kidnapping of the bride and about rescuing her from another world, about marrying a wonderful wife, and tales about how a destitute hero takes over evil relatives.
The oldest of these cycles includes stories about the search for a disappeared bride: “Like a young man was looking for his beloved”, where the heroine is kidnapped by an evil werewolf, and “The Tale of the cunning U-gen and faithful Shi-ye”, where the woodcutter's beloved is carried away by the Black Eagle. Recall that in Russian fairy tales, the bride or wife of the hero is often kidnapped by the Serpent, Koschey or Whirlwind, which, in the view of the ancient man, were associated with the other world and the abduction of a girl by them was perceived as a violation of the custom to take a wife only from their own clan or tribe. The beautiful heroine should have been taken away from the kidnapper, an alien from another world, and returned to “his” hero from the human world. Therefore, even in ancient times, fairy tales of this type developed mainly as stories about the hero’s journey to the underworld, where with the help of magic he rescues his bride and safely returns home with her. In later versions, this plot is significantly changed. The hero's journey to the underworld is replaced in the tale "As a young man was looking for his beloved" by walking to a distant island in the middle of the sea. In the tale about the brothers Wu-gen and Shi-e eagle takes the girl to his lair, in a deep dark cave on high mountain. But in the Middle Ages, the Chinese just imagined hell located in a deep cave on top of a mountain. The kidnapper in the form of an eagle is also hardly accidental. The Tungus-Manchu and Turkic-Mongolian peoples neighboring the Chinese have preserved the cult of the eagle, the ancestor of shamans, which, according to popular belief, could enter into relations with women and was an indispensable accompaniment of shamans in their wanderings around the underworld. The Chinese themselves still call this mighty bird “laoin” - “venerable eagle”.
The hero, who went in search of a bride to the underworld, has to go through a long chain of trials: meet the guardian of the entrance to the underworld (in a Russian fairy tale, this is Baba Yaga), taste ritual food from her, cross a water barrier, and only after that return to the world of people .
The journey to the underworld usually begins with crossing a water barrier guarded by a water serpent, a huge fish, or another monster. The hero gets a magical agent, kills a monster, then crosses the sea or river, and he overcomes the water barrier with the help of those objects or animals that are associated with funeral rites reflecting the most ancient ideas about the path of the deceased to another world. Zhang Shuan from the fairy tale “Like a young man was looking for his beloved” also has to cross the sea to the island where his beloved is languishing. But the sea is guarded by a black fish. To kill her, Zhang Shuan needs to get a magic sword. And to get the sword, he has to go through the fire. (IN primitive times one of the main types of the rite of initiation of a young man into an adult man was a real or symbolic trial by fire. Moreover, this rite itself was conceived as a temporary descent into the other world.) magic sword in the hands of a young man, it is already easy to kill the kidnapper - the werewolf fish and, after tasting the magical peach, cross the sea. Peach, according to Chinese beliefs, bestows immortality. According to mythical legends, peaches grew in the garden of Xi Wang-mu - the Mistress of the West, that is, the mistress of another world. Even now, if you go to a Chinese temple, you will see sacrificial fruits in front of the tablets with the names of deceased ancestors - peaches made of thick paper.
The hero returns to the world of people with the help of a wonderful helper, a friend whom he finds in the underworld, having rendered him an important service. So, in the fairy tale about the brothers U-gen and Shi-e, the hero returns to the world of people with the help of a carp. Is it a coincidence that in a Chinese fairy tale, a carp turns out to be an assistant? The miraculous helper, like the image of a fairy tale, was apparently formed on the basis of ideas primitive man about the assistant - the totem of the family, commanding the elements. One of the most common totems among the tribes that inhabited the territory of modern China and neighboring countries was the dragon. Carp was considered the king of fish, and he was revered on a par with the dragon. Later, in the 4th-6th centuries AD, when the Chinese formed the image of the king of dragons, the carp began to be considered his son.
New elements were gradually added to the ancient story about bride kidnapping. In the tale about U-gen and Shi-ye, for example, these later features appear mainly in the beginning (it is known that it is the beginnings of the tale that lend themselves most easily to alterations and modifications). Here the ancient plot - the abduction of a girl - is, as it were, framed by the story of two brothers - lazy Wu-gen and industrious Shi-e. And the scene of the hero's acquaintance with the beauty, the daughter of a rich man - the city dweller Zhang, to whom he carries firewood for sale, is a typical picture of the life of already feudal China.
Fairy tales about a wonderful wife are very common among the Chinese. In the fairy tale "The Magic Picture" the hero marries a girl who has descended from the picture, in another fairy tale the peony maiden turns out to be his wife, in the third - the Jade Fairy - the spirit of the peach tree, in the fourth - the lotus girl, in the fifth - the carp girl. The oldest basis of all these tales is marriage with a totem wife. Marriage to a maiden-totem was conceived in the deepest antiquity as a way to master the natural resources that she allegedly disposed of. This is the clearest ancient foundation peeps in the tale "Zhenshen the Werewolf", the heroine of which - a wonderful maiden - points out to her beloved the place where the healing root grows.
Marriage with a totem maiden in fairy tales is often and easily terminated due to violation of any marriage prohibitions. So, by the way, it happens in the tale of the ginseng maiden. It should be said that this story has come down to us in a greatly altered form. A feudal city, a tavern, a government office are already appearing here - the county government. All this background is surprisingly reminiscent of a medieval urban story. It was under her influence, apparently, that the archaic fairy tale plot changed.
Even greater changes under the influence social conditions underwent the plot of the tale The Garden of the Jade Maiden. Her hero, a poor stonemason, meets a maiden - the spirit of a peach tree. She does not really give him any special "productive power", only helps the stonemason get rid of a heavy duty and punishes the guard who raised his hand against him. In ancient times, the Chinese endowed the peach tree with the ability to drive away evil spirit. In a late fairy tale, the fairy spirit of the peach tree also turns away an evil force from the young man, but now it is quite real - officials and guards.
In all the tales recorded in our time, the totem maiden turned into a werewolf maiden. This happened, apparently, under the influence of a very common belief in werewolves in the countries of the Far East: anyone old item or a beast that has lived for a long time can take on a human form: a broom forgotten behind a closet after many years can turn into a werewolf broom, a beast that has lived a thousand years becomes white, and one that has lived ten thousand years becomes black; both have magical ability to transformations. Belief in werewolf animals among the people was so tenacious that even in the encyclopedia of crafts and agriculture in the 15th century, it was said with all seriousness how to expel werewolf foxes: it is enough to hit a werewolf with a piece of an old, withered tree, and it will immediately take on its original form.
Belief in werewolves survived in China largely due to the religious Taoism that developed in the first centuries of our era. The Taoists included in their cult images of the so-called lower mythology (elemental spirits, werewolves, restless souls of the dead). Taoist monks took the place of the ancient shamans. They were invited to the sick to drive out the spirit of illness or to cleanse the house of obsession. But in fairy tales werewolves are not always negative characters. A ginseng maiden, for example, tells her lover that she has never harmed people, even though she is a werewolf. Such duality fabulous image was born from a combination of ancient ideas about the totem wife, helping the one who enters into communication with her, with later beliefs about werewolves, the ching, who lure people and harm them.
Comparing the development of fairy tales about the wonderful wife on Far East with the same tales of other peoples, say European, it should be noted that here the evolution of the plot went in a slightly different way. In Europe, these tales turned into stories about the marriage of the hero to the usually enchanted beautiful princess, which gives the hero no longer magical power over nature, but the right to the throne, that is, power over people. Different ways of developing one initial plot also determined the fundamental differences in the entire entourage of the tale. In Chinese fairy tales there is no pomp, colorful description royal life, heroes and heroines do not live in palaces, but in poor peasant huts.
There are among fairy tales fairy tales about the trials of a son-in-law in the kingdom of a father-in-law. In the fairy tale "Heavenly Drum", the hero marries a heavenly fairy, but this union is quickly terminated, as the father takes the fairy to heaven and locks it in a heavenly prison. In order to return his wife, the young man must go through a long chain of marital trials in the kingdom of his father-in-law, which he did not pass before marriage, thereby violating the marriage ritual. Only after completing all the tasks that his father-in-law asks him, the young man can reconnect with his heavenly wife.
Fairy tales about the victory of a destitute hero over his opponent, usually an evil and greedy older brother and his wife, over a stepfather or stepmother, are well known to the reader. In the Chinese "Tale of the Younger Brother", the idealization of the younger family member as the guardian of the family hearth and tribal traditions, characteristic of the folklore of many peoples, is clearly expressed. The younger brother is more fortunate than the elder because he gets, although a small, but extremely important part of the parental inheritance. In our version of the tale, recorded on the Shandong Peninsula, younger brother receives a piece of lean land, a rooster and a dog, on which he plows. Plowing on a dog is, apparently, a rethought ancient idea of a totem ancestor (it is known that among many peoples related to the Chinese who lived south of the Yangtze, it was a dog that was a totem, and therefore their first ancestor was depicted in the guise of a dog), on which fertility depends. The evil older brother kills both the dog and the rooster, the younger one buries them, and not just anywhere, but in front of his dwelling, that is, on his ancestral land. From their bones grows a wonderful elm with coin leaves. On popular more recently folk prints often one could see the image of yaotsyanshu - "a tree shaking off coins." Let us recall that in the Russian fairy tale about the stepdaughter, a wonderful garden grows out of the bones of a cow, the patroness of the destitute heroine. This motif known to all peoples is apparently based on ancient beliefs about the ritual killing of animals, from which various useful plants grow. Of course, the Chinese storyteller of our time has no idea about the archaic basis of the plot. For him, these ancient motifs are just familiar poetic images of the fairy-tale world.
In addition to the complex archaic basis of Chinese fairy tales, it should also be said about their other most ancient features. It's about about numeric and color symbolism, as well as the national system of orientation in time and space. Ninety-nine rivers circled Tien-tai - the hero of the fairy tale "Portrait of a Girl from the Palace", he raced nine hundred and ninety-nine miles a thousand times before he found a magic earwig. Derivatives from the number nine are constantly found in other fairy tales. According to ancient ideas, nine was the main odd (or, as the Chinese called it, male) number. In Chinese fairy tales, odd numbers generally predominate. For example, in the designation of the number of heroes - five sisters, seven brothers.
The most common colors in Chinese fairy tales are green and red; green is the color of vegetation and, accordingly, spring, red is the color of fire, ripening fruits, and hence summer. Both of these colors symbolized the course of life in the minds of the Chinese, not without reason, apparently, when in the tale of a dog and a cat animals come to the merchant's house, they see people in red and green there - they are preparing for the wedding in the house. It is known that in some southern provinces of China the groom is carried in a green palanquin, and the bride in red.
Dark and black colors, on the contrary, were associated, in all likelihood, with afterlife, although the Chinese also had other positive associations with black.
In fairy tales, we constantly encounter the designations of the cardinal directions. An immortal elder descending from heaven advises the heroes of the fairy tale “The Wives in the Mirror” to turn the mirrors to the southwest to see the brides he has betrothed; in the fairy tale “The Fox Woman”, the werewolf girl, saying goodbye, punishes her lover to go looking for her to the southwest. The southwest is mentioned here clearly not by chance. The ancient Chinese fortune-telling "Book of Changes" (VIII - VII centuries BC) says: "The southwest is favorable, there you will meet with kind person". The idea of the southwest as a side where a pleasant meeting for the hero should take place has been preserved among the people to this day. “The northeast is unfavorable,” we read in the same book, and we understand that it is also not by chance that the evil dragon in the fairy tale “The Werewolf” flies from the northeast. Special mention should be made of the West. There it was according to ancient ideas realm of the dead. “Return to the West” meant “to die” in Chinese, and when the old woman in the fairy tale “Open up, stone gates!” shows the heroes the way to the west, they end up in another world, located in a mountain cave. When the heroine of a fairy tale magic picture", which was carried away by an evil werewolf, punishes him to pass on to his beloved, so that he would look for her in Western country, - this means that he must go to the land of the dead.
Events in Chinese fairy tales are often associated with some dates - usually holidays of the old agricultural calendar. Amazing adventures happen with heroes or in New Year, or on the holiday of lanterns, or on special days of commemoration of the departed ancestors. On these holidays, a fairy tale keeps track of the passage of time in the world of people. In another world and time is different - this is clearly realized by storytellers. It seems that the husband and wife from the fairy tale “Open up, stone gates!” Haven’t been in another world for long, and on earth “not a century or two have passed.”
The fairy tales of the Chinese, as well as some other Far Eastern peoples, are distinguished by a special "earthiness" fairy tale fiction. The action in them never takes place in a certain kingdom - the thirtieth state, everything unusual, on the contrary, happens with the hero nearby, in places familiar and familiar to the storyteller. Most of the fairy tales included in the collection were recorded by folklorists Dong Jun-lun and Chiang Yuan in the remote Yishan County of Shandong Province. Here, in the Ishan mountains, all sorts of miracles happen to the heroes of fairy tales. But the point is not only in the more or less exact localization of the scene of the tale, but also in the extremely characteristic combination of complex fiction in them with the real life of the characters. The most incredible is often written out with such details, purely everyday, and sometimes naturalistic, that it ceases to seem so incredible. It seems to us that this is the fundamental difference between Chinese fairy tale fantasy and the unbridled and not at all mundane fantasy of Indian or, for example, Arabic fairy tales.
The section of fairy tales ends in the collection with a story about amazing adventures masters. Some fairy-tale motifs are used here (a hero's journey in the belly of a fish, a meeting with a giant, and others), but there is no plot characteristic of a fairy tale. This narrative is closest to adventurous tales, but, unlike them, it is replete with magical adventures. This amazing story, clearly developed in late time(it’s not for nothing that even steamboats are mentioned in it!), is interesting as a story about funny adventures artisans in different worlds and countries, adventures, somewhat reminiscent of Gulliver's journey or the amazing adventures of the heroes of the novel "Flowers in the Mirror" by the 19th-century Chinese prose writer Li Zhu-zhen.
The section of everyday fairy tales, among which there are also satirical ones, opens with fairy tales "Magic vat" and "Beautiful wife"; they are built according to the laws of a satirical fairy tale, although leading role are still playing magic items. In other fairy tales, everyday elements have replaced everything magical. Among them there are many stories known all over the world. Where only they do not tell a fairy tale about a fool who does everything at random! At a funeral, he shouts: "You can't drag it," and at a wedding - "Eve and incense." His Chinese "brother" ("Stupid Husband") does almost the same thing: he lashes out with swearing at funeral procession, and offers to help the bearers of a painted wedding palanquin to carry the coffin. Such fairy tales always end in the same way: in a Russian fairy tale, a fool is beaten, and in a Chinese one, an angry bull puts him on his horns.
In Chinese satirical tales, the reader will find another extremely popular different literatures plot: a lover hidden in a chest. Almost for the first time he is found in the famous "Ocean of Legends" by the Indian writer of the XI century Somadeva; we find it later in the tenth day novella of the fourth "Decameron" by Boccaccio and in many works of Russian literature of the XVIII-XIX centuries, starting with the anonymous "Tale of Karp Sutulov". The wife of the merchant Sutulov, just like the heroine of a Chinese fairy tale, deftly deceives the archbishop who harassed her, pushing him against other claimants and locking him in a chest. It is characteristic that in the Chinese fairy tale, the abbot of the monastery, that is, a spiritual person, turns out to be in the chest.
Unlike the Russians satirical tales, where the judge is a negative character, in Chinese folklore there is a cycle of tales about the wise judge Bao-gun, the ruler of the capital city of Kai-feng at the beginning of the 11th century, who became famous for his incorruptibility and justice. Subsequently, numerous legends about the wise investigation of complicated crimes or about the fair resolution of complex lawsuits were associated with his name, which became a household name. The image of a real ruler in folklore is, of course, highly idealized. His popularity was greatly facilitated by the plays about Judge Bao, which had been on the Chinese stage since the 13th century. Among these dramas were works that told how Judge Bao repaired the court over the imperial son-in-law, the sovereign's favorite concubine, princes and unjust rulers of regions and counties. Bao even executes one of the judges of hell, for which he has to go down to the underworld. Tales of the wise decisions of Judge Bao in contrast to dramatic works are quite simple. And the cases here are smaller, and the investigation is simpler.
For centuries, feudal China was known as an empire of bureaucrats. Their stupidity, arrogance and greed appear before us in folk tales. The peasants, the creators of the tale, had direct dealings only with county officials. The action of all these fairy tales usually takes place in the district administration - yamyn. Household fairy tale must show the illogicality of the ordinary, turn the habitual norms of life inside out, therefore the winner in it invariably turns out to be a man from the people, a commoner, and the county chief either remains in the cold or becomes a laughing stock.
Fairy tales about the disgrace of the syucai scholars are very characteristic of old China. In order to obtain the lowest scientific degree of xutsai, it was necessary to pass the exams in the county town, and only then it was possible to take up a bureaucratic position. The only requirement for the exams was knowledge of Confucian classic books. In practical matters, the shucai knew little. The arrogance and stupidity of this kind of pundits is the eternal theme of mocking satirical tales, one of which (“How three sons-in-law congratulated”) is placed in this collection.
IN last section The books included tales of ginseng craftsmen and seekers, as well as ancient legends. Artisans' tales are a little-known part of Chinese folklore. Many of them are associated with the names of deified heroes who taught their amazing art other people or who sacrificed themselves in order to help artisans complete some difficult task. Sacrificing herself, she saves her father-blacksmith and his comrades, the girl Zhen-zhu in the tale "The Goddess of the Furnace". A similar legend is told in Peking about the daughter of master Deng, who rushed into the furnace to help her father and his henchmen cast a huge bell on the orders of the emperor. Like Zhen-zhu, this girl was deified as the patroness of bell-casters, and a temple was erected in her honor. These stories were based on ancient ideas about the need to sacrifice a person in order to propitiate the spirits.
The fairy tale-legend about the king-boa constrictor reflects very ancient ideas about the cleansing of the earth from scary monsters. Such stories among the Chinese were once associated with the image of the mythical shooter Yi, who saved people from the evil cannibal yaoyu bull, the fearsome boar fensy, the dafeng boa constrictor and the fang-drill tsochi. Like him, the hero of the legend "King-boa constrictor" kills terrible snakes guarding ginseng. Many motives of a fairy tale are also used in the legend - a young man accomplishes a feat only thanks to wonderful helpers: a crow, a banchuinyao bird, a zhenshen boy, a birch spirit.
The archaic nature of the zhensheng tales is apparently explained by the fact that these tales exist mainly among the seekers themselves, and possibly also by the fact that seekers of the healing root often met in the mountains and forests with representatives of other, already Tungus-Manchurian peoples (Nanai, Udege, Manchu ), oral creativity which are much more archaic than the Chinese.
The collection ends with three extremely widespread legends in China. The oldest of these is the story of Bootes and the Weaver. For the first time we find this plot in Chinese poetry of the beginning of our era. In the version included in this collection, many fairy tale motifs were combined: the story of the division of property between brothers, and the episode with the theft of clothes from a dove girl who descended from the sky, and the trials of a young son-in-law from an evil father-in-law. ancient legend about the stars of the Shepherd from the constellation Eagle and the Weaver from the constellation Lyra, separated milky way, here the appearance of a familiar fairy tale is given.
Similar changes are noticeable in The Tale of Meng Chiang-nu. An old legend about a woman who destroyed the Great Chinese wall, known to us already from the processing of the VIII-IX centuries, receives a purely fabulous design in later prose versions (the beginning is added that describes miraculous birth pumpkin heroines, the legend of the magic whip of Emperor Shi Huang).
The third of these legends (“O Liang Shan-bo and Zhu Ying-tai”) was apparently formed by the 8th-10th centuries. It is clearly later and, with the exception of the ending, quite domestic. It tells about the love of a girl disguised as a young man for her school friend. This theme has been repeated a thousand times in dramas different centuries and localities. A play about a touching love destroyed against the will of young people was shown in our country in 1955 by the theater of the Shaoxing musical drama. In this legend with special artistic power a protest was expressed against the cruelty of parents who forcibly gave their daughters in marriage. Tragically shattered love is a recurring theme in many highly poetic Chinese legends.
All these legends have long entered the popular consciousness. At Shanhai-guan, a small town where the Great Wall begins, you will be shown huge stones in the sea. According to legend, Meng Jiang-nu, faithful to the memory of her husband, drowned herself here. In the province of Shaanxi, there are ruins of a temple where statues of Meng Chiang-nu and her husband have been preserved. For centuries, the people celebrated the seventh day of the seventh moon as the day of the meeting of Bootes and the Weaver. In the vicinity of Shanghai, people have long been calling yellow butterflies Liang Shan-bo, and black butterflies - Zhu Ying-tai. Temples in honor of these heroes can be seen in different parts of the country. And, of course, these stories were favorite on colorful New Year's prints.
Legends, as well as fairy tales of various genres, show us the originality of oral folk art Chinese and at the same time testify that the Chinese fairy tale epic is not a unique phenomenon. On the contrary, Chinese fairy tales are a national variant of the worldwide fairy tale creativity that developed on the basis of primitive ideas and beliefs that are very similar for most peoples. It is hardly accidental that the most popular in all provinces of China are those stories that are well known to our readers from childhood. Such is the story of a fox and three girls, surprisingly similar to the fairy tale "The Wolf and the Seven Kids", fairy tales about the trials of a son-in-law in the father-in-law's kingdom, reminiscent of the story of the swan princess; "Groom Serpent" - option " scarlet flower", and many others.
Chinese fairy tales for at least one and a half thousand years nourished their images and plots literary novel. Already in collections short stories about the miracles created in the III-VI centuries, we will find a lot fabulous motives. It is there that for the first time there is a story about a wonderful snail wife who cooks for a poor peasant Tasty food. The tale was also used by some novelists. So, the plot of a grateful carp entered the fabric fantasy novel Wu Chen-en (XVI century) "Journey to the West". The plot of a mouse that fell into a vat (“Mountain Mouse and City Mouse”), presented as an anecdote, included in his collection funny stories famous writer of the 17th century Feng Meng-long. Tales of wonderful wives in the most bizarre versions reworked famous writer XVII century Pu Sung-ling, author of "The amazing stories of Liao-zhai", known to us under the name "Fox charms". Written literature, in turn, influenced illiterate storytellers. From the retellings of novels, they borrowed descriptions of heroes and some comparisons; under the influence of old stories, individual tales (for example, "The Werewolf Fox") end with rhymed quatrains. People call this fairy tale and similar stories about werewolves, close to the novel, "Liao-zhai chazi" - "Branches of Liao-zhai", thereby emphasizing the influence amazing stories Pu Sun-ling. Collectors met this name, however, only in Shandong, in the writer's homeland.
Although the Chinese fairy tales quite early they got into written literature, the tales themselves began to be collected and written down quite recently. It was not until 1918 that the Society for the Study of Chinese was formed at Peking University. folk song, following him, various societies that set themselves the goal of collecting, publishing and studying the folklore heritage of the country began to emerge in other cities of China. Chinese folklorists in the 1920s and 1930s collected and published many versions of various fairy tales. But truly grandiose collecting work in the country was launched only by the Society for the Study of Chinese Folklore, created in 1950, after the victory of the people's power. There was probably not a single provincial publishing house in China that would not have published several collections of legends and fairy tales in 1950-1963. However, neither earlier nor during these years in China was not a single complete and representative collection of folk tales compiled. There were also no accurate, scientific publications of recorded texts. If in the 1920s and 1930s collectors, apparently, it was no coincidence that they passed by acutely social satirical tales, then in the 1950s and 1960s the opposite happened, folklore was sometimes processed quite arbitrarily and tendentiously before the records appeared on the pages of printed publications. The evil brothers in such processed versions often turned into cruel landowners, the plot was distorted, and the fairy tale often lost the appearance that has been inherent in it since ancient times. The processing also concerned the language of fairy tales: if in magazines of forty years ago, fairy tales were often presented in archaic literary language, which no one has spoken for many centuries, then in later collections the language is smoothed everywhere and it is difficult to distinguish living folk speech. Almost nothing is reported by Chinese folklorists about the storytellers themselves, the features of their repertoire, and manners. We only know about Qin Di-nui, an old peasant woman from Inner Mongolia, from whom folklorists wrote down the beautiful versions of the fairy tales "The Bridegroom Serpent" and "Bootes and the Weaver" placed in this collection. In 1954, when in her native village scientists came, she was sixty-seven years old. She heard her fairy tales in childhood from her mother, and she adopted them from her mother.
The book is called "Chinese folk tales"is published by the publishing house" Fiction" the third time. In preparing this edition, most of the tales included in previous collections were replaced by new ones taken from publications made by Chinese folklorists in the late 1920s and early 1960s.
Chinese fairy tales bring us the breath of life Chinese people, depict its difficult past and show how rich and inexhaustible ancient Chinese folklore is.
The 5th racket of the world, Czech Karolina Pliskova, will play the 1/16 final match against Chinese Shuai Zhang (WTA: 33) at the tournament in Indian Wells on March 11 at 22:00 Moscow time.
Karolina Pliskova
Karolina Pliskova has no titles this year, and generally looks modest according to the results, however, she continues to hold the fifth position in the WTA ranking. And let's note that this season the tennis player suffered four defeats, three of which were from rivals in the top 8 rating, and only the fiasco at the tournament in Doha from the young American Catherine Bellis (6-7 3-6) stands apart. Best Performance this year, the Czech was at the Australian Open, where she lost only in the quarterfinals to Romanian Simona Halep (3-6 2-6). At her last tournament in Dubai, Pliskova lost in the ¼ finals to Angelique Kerber from Germany (4-6 3-6), and her performance in Indian Wells began with a very confident victory over the representative of Romania Irina-Camelia Begu (7-6 6-1) .
Shuai Zhang
Shuai Zhang is currently ranked 33rd in the WTA rankings. Note that in the current season, the Chinese woman showed her best results at not the most representative tournaments in Budapest and Acapulco, where she reached the quarterfinals. However, it is worth noting that the tennis player beat not very rated rivals there, and in the ¼ finals she was inferior to opponents who do not even fall into the top 50. So in Acapulco, Shuai Zhang was defeated by Swede Rebecca Peterson (2-6 1-6). In Indian Wells, the representative of China in the first round was stronger than Sofia Kenin from the USA (6-2 6-3).
Statistics of personal meetings Karolina Pliskova - Shuai Zhang
Previously, all six face-to-face meetings of the rivals ended with victories by Karolina Pliskova. In the last match, however, the tennis player defeated Shuai Zhang only in three sets (6-4 3-6 6-4), but this duel took place in the homeland of the Chinese woman.
Odds for the match from the bookmaker
For the victory of Karolina Pliskova and Shuai Zhang, he put up quotes of 1.26 and 4.32. The total over 20.0 is valued by the office at 1.98, and the total under 20.0 at 1.92.
Bet on the match Karolina Pliskova - Shuai Zhang from the website
Karolina Plishkova has previously beaten an opponent from China in six meetings in a row, and now there is no reason to assume that otherwise will happen. In the last two head-to-head fights, the Czech defeated Shuai Zhang in only three sets, which should make her treat upcoming match with full responsibility. Especially last season Pliskova in Indian Wells reached the semi-finals, and now she needs to protect her points. And let's note that the Chinese woman has not been remembered for anything special this year, beating only opponents who are in the ranking outside the top 50. So, summing up, we bet on the confident victory of Karolina Pliskova.
The hero, who went in search of a bride to the underworld, has to go through a long chain of trials: meet the guardian of the entrance to the underworld (in a Russian fairy tale, this is Baba Yaga), taste ritual food from her, cross a water barrier, and only after that return to the world of people .
The journey to the underworld usually begins with crossing a water barrier guarded by a water serpent, a huge fish, or another monster. The hero obtains a magical agent, kills the monster, then crosses the sea or river, and he overcomes the water barrier with the help of those objects or animals that are associated with funeral rites, reflecting ancient ideas about the path of the deceased to another world. Zhang Shuan from the fairy tale “Like a young man was looking for his beloved” also has to cross the sea to the island where his beloved is languishing. But the sea is guarded by a black fish. To kill her, Zhang Shuan needs to get a magic sword. And to get the sword, he has to go through the fire. (In primitive times, one of the main types of the rite of initiation of a young man into an adult man was a real or symbolic trial by fire. Moreover, this rite itself was thought of as a temporary descent into the other world.) With a magic sword in the hands of a young man, it is already easy to kill the kidnapper - the werewolf fish and, after tasting the magic peach, cross the sea. Peach, according to Chinese beliefs, bestows immortality. According to mythical legends, peaches grew in the garden of Xi Wang-mu - the Mistress of the West, that is, the mistress of another world. Even now, if you go into a Chinese temple, you will see sacrificial fruits in front of the tablets with the names of deceased ancestors - peaches made of thick paper.
The hero returns to the world of people with the help of a wonderful helper, a friend whom he finds in the underworld, having rendered him an important service. So, in the fairy tale about the brothers U-gen and Shi-e, the hero returns to the world of people with the help of a carp. Is it a coincidence that in a Chinese fairy tale, a carp turns out to be an assistant? The miraculous helper, as an image of a fairy tale, was apparently formed on the basis of the ideas of a primitive person about an assistant - a totem of the clan, commanding the elements. One of the most common totems among the tribes that inhabited the territory of modern China and neighboring countries was the dragon. Carp was considered the king of fish, and he was revered on a par with the dragon. Later, in the 4th-6th centuries of our era, when the image of the king of dragons developed among the Chinese, the carp began to be considered his son.
New elements were gradually added to the ancient story about bride kidnapping. In the tale about U-gen and Shi-ye, for example, these later features appear mainly in the beginning (it is known that it is the beginnings of the tale that lend themselves most easily to alterations and modifications). Here, the ancient plot - the abduction of a girl - is framed, as it were, by the story of two brothers - the lazy Wu-gen and the industrious Shi-ye. And the scene of the hero's acquaintance with the beauty, the daughter of a rich man - the city dweller Zhang, to whom he carries firewood for sale, is a typical picture of the life of already feudal China.
Fairy tales about a wonderful wife are very common among the Chinese. In the fairy tale "The Magic Picture" the hero marries a girl who has descended from the picture, in another fairy tale the peony girl turns out to be his wife, in the third - the Jade Fairy - the spirit of the peach tree, in the fourth - the lotus girl, in the fifth - the carp girl. The oldest basis of all these tales is marriage with a totem wife. Marriage to a maiden-totem was conceived in the deepest antiquity as a way to master the natural resources that she allegedly disposed of. Most clearly, this ancient foundation is seen in the tale “Genshen the Werewolf”, the heroine of which, a wonderful maiden, points out to her beloved the place where the healing root grows.
Marriage with a totem maiden in fairy tales is often and easily terminated due to violation of any marriage prohibitions. So, by the way, it happens in the tale of the ginseng maiden. It should be said that this story has come down to us in a greatly altered form. A feudal city, a tavern, a government office are already appearing here - the county government. All this background is surprisingly reminiscent of a medieval urban story. It was under her influence, apparently, that the archaic fairy tale plot changed.
The plot of the fairy tale "Garden of the Jade Maiden" underwent even greater changes under the influence of social conditions. Her hero, a poor stonemason, meets a maiden - the spirit of a peach tree. She does not really give him any special "productive power", only helps the stonemason get rid of a heavy duty and punishes the guard who raised his hand against him. In ancient times, the Chinese endowed the peach tree with the ability to ward off evil spirits. In a late fairy tale, the fairy spirit of the peach tree also turns away an evil force from the young man, but now it is quite real - officials and guards.
In all the tales recorded in our time, the totem maiden turned into a werewolf maiden. This happened, apparently, under the influence of a belief in werewolves, which is very common in the countries of the Far East: any old object or long-lived animal can take on a human form: a broom forgotten behind a closet after many years can de turn into a werewolf broom, a beast that has lived a thousand years , becomes white, and lived ten thousand years - black - both have the magical ability to transform. Belief in werewolf animals among the people was so tenacious that even in the encyclopedia of crafts and agriculture in the 15th century, it was said with all seriousness how to expel werewolf foxes: it is enough to hit a werewolf with a piece of an old, withered tree, and it will immediately take on its original form.
Belief in werewolves survived in China largely due to the religious Taoism that developed in the first centuries of our era. The Taoists included in their cult images of the so-called lower mythology (elemental spirits, werewolves, restless souls of the dead). Taoist monks took the place of the ancient shamans. They were invited to the sick to drive out the spirit of illness or to cleanse the house of obsession. But in fairy tales werewolves are not always negative characters. A ginseng maiden, for example, tells her lover that she has never harmed people, even though she is a werewolf. Such a duality of the fairy-tale image was born from a combination of ancient ideas about a totem wife, helping the one who enters into a relationship with her, with later beliefs about werewolves-ching, who lure people and harm them.
Comparing the development of fairy tales about a wonderful wife in the Far East with the same fairy tales of other peoples, let's say European ones, it should be noted that here the evolution of the plot went in a slightly different way. In Europe, these tales turned into stories about the marriage of a hero to a usually enchanted beautiful princess, who no longer gives the hero magical power over nature, but the right to the throne, that is, power over people. Different ways of developing one initial plot also determined the fundamental differences in the entire entourage of the tale. In Chinese fairy tales there is no splendor, colorful description of royal life, heroes and heroines do not live in palaces, but in poor peasant huts.
Among fairy tales, there are tales about trials of a son-in-law in the kingdom of a father-in-law. In the fairy tale "Heavenly Drum", the hero marries a heavenly fairy, but this union is quickly terminated, as the father takes the fairy to heaven and locks it in a heavenly prison. In order to get his wife back, the young man must go through a long chain of marital trials in the father-in-law's kingdom, which he did not pass before marriage, thereby violating the marriage ritual. Only after completing all the tasks that his father-in-law asks him, the young man can reconnect with his heavenly wife.
Fairy tales about the victory of a destitute hero over his opponent, usually an evil and greedy older brother and his wife, over a stepfather or stepmother, are well known to the reader. In the Chinese "Tale of the Younger Brother", the idealization of the younger family member as the guardian of the family hearth and tribal traditions, characteristic of the folklore of many peoples, is clearly expressed. The younger brother is more fortunate than the elder because he gets, although a small, but extremely important part of the parental inheritance. In our version of the tale, recorded on the Shandong Peninsula, the younger brother receives a piece of lean land, a rooster and a dog, on which he plows. Plowing on a dog is, apparently, a rethought ancient idea of a totem ancestor (it is known that among many peoples related to the Chinese who lived south of the Yangtze, it was a dog that was a totem, and therefore their first ancestor was depicted in the guise of a dog), on which fertility depends. The evil older brother kills both the dog and the rooster, the younger one buries them, and not just anywhere, but in front of his dwelling, that is, on his ancestral land. From their bones grows a wonderful elm with coin leaves. On the recently popular popular popular prints, one could often see the image of yaotsyanshu - “a tree shaking off coins”. Let us recall that in the Russian fairy tale about the stepdaughter, a wonderful garden grows out of the bones of a cow, the patroness of the destitute heroine. This motif known to all peoples is apparently based on ancient beliefs about the ritual killing of animals, from which various useful plants grow. Of course, the Chinese storyteller of our time has no idea about the archaic basis of the plot. For him, these ancient motifs are just familiar poetic images of the fairy-tale world.
