Chinese Tales Research Articles

Beijing Mythological Stories about the Lady of the Bell Foundry

In the second half of the nineteenth century at the latest, a legend emerged in Beijing about the sacrificial death of the founder's daughter during the casting of a large bell for the Bell Tower. It is similar to a group of medieval Chinese tales associated with the cults of patron deities of the crafts. These have their origins in tales from Western regions related to Eastern European stories of walled-up wives. In the case of the Beijing tradition, the religious tale is transformed into a secular legend with, at best, a tenuous connection to a local cult. The story of the casting of a bell for the Bell Tower persists in Beijing's oral tradition to this day. There are also a number of related stories told in other regions of China, as well as Korean tales that are genetically linked to it. The article examines both the structural and semantic features of several mythological stories about the making of a bell for the Bell Tower recorded by Chinese folklorists from the 1950s to the 1980s, alongside those of the first known English (1870s) and the first known Chinese (1930s) amateur recordings of the legend. It also traces the connection of these texts with similar narratives from other regions, as well as with the aforementioned medieval legends of patron deities of crafts, ancient beliefs in the efficacy of human sacrifice for metallurgical production characteristic of the Wu region, and Confucian notions of filial piety.

The influence of the Chinese Cinderella (“Yeh-Shen”) on the evolving image of Cinderella in the West

Taking Cinderella as an evolving image across cultures, this article compares the image of Yeh-Shen in major English translations to those of Cinderella in the Western classics of Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Disney. The study incorporates a comparison of the story types and the protagonists’ family backgrounds, social statuses, and personalities in constructing the evolving image of Cinderella. It is argued that the widely acknowledged story genealogy of “Basile–Perrault–the Brothers Grimm–Disney” is questionable in terms of the phenomenon of Cinderella “becoming of the people’s princess”. Evidence found in both reader acceptance and postmodernist rewritings supports the hypothesis that the story of Yeh-Shen has had a substantial influence on the evolving image of Cinderella. The analysis of its English translation and acceptance from a comparative perspective brings to light the continued legacy of the literary image of Yeh-Shen, illustrates the esthetic complexity and possibilities of image translation, and most importantly, reveals the rich roots of postmodernist themes contained in the Chinese tale that has long influenced the West.

상호 문화 이해의 관점에서 본 ‘활동’ 중심의 한국문화교육방안

In this paper, I examined a method of Korean cultural education aimed at mutual cultural understanding. In this case, I focused on ‘activities’ using Chinese and Korean folktales for advanced Chinese learners. First, I reviewed the relevant prior research and found that when using folktales, the activities were mainly focused on Korean culture only. However, even advanced learners have limited knowledge of Korean culture, so I thought it would be more effective to use cultural knowledge reflected in native tales familiar to learners as schemas. These schemas could be applied not once, but continuously and cumulatively in the process of teaching and learning. From this perspective, I first presented the Chinese tale ‘Moeunyeo’ and then the Korean tale ‘The fairy and the woodcutter’, and proposed an activity-based teaching and learning method that utilizes cultural elements reflected in these tales. Based on this, I proposed activities related to cultural elements that can be extracted from the contents of the two tales, and activities in terms of cross-cultural education. At the same time, I also presented reference materials that should be provided to learners related to Korean culture.

From the Imagination to the Reality: Historical Aspects of Rewriting Six Dynasties Buddhist Avadāna Stories

In at least two aspects, Buddhist Avadāna literature shares a strong affinity with Chinese literature. One type of stories can be seen as parallel tales that bear striking resemblances to Chinese tales, while the other type has been assimilated by Chinese writers and transformed into Chinese tales. Regarding the first kind, there are many parallels between Buddhist and Chinese stories throughout the Six Dynasties (222–589), and it was only later that these stories were somehow compiled into collections that brought these parallels to light. As an example of the second type, in linggui zhi 靈鬼志 (The Record of Magical Ghosts) of the Jin Dynasty (265–402), the story of waiguo daoren 外國道人 (“the Foreign Master”) adapts the magical plot in which a man throws up a jug from the story of fanzhi tuhu 梵志吐壺 (“a Brahmin Spits a jug”) in the Buddhist text, yet it changes certain objects of the story to items with Chinese characteristics and develops new meaning. In Xu qixiezhi 續齊諧志 (Further Records of Qixie [Supernatural tales]), the famous e’long shusheng 鵝籠書生 (“the Goose Cage Scholar”, also known as the yangxian shusheng 陽羨書生” (the Scholar from Yangxian)”), takes the same story to another level. The structure of the story is changed, and a number of literati aesthetic interests are added, improving the literary color, smoothing down the language, and making substitutions in the text’s specifics, thus, bolstering the sense of realism and history. Meanwhile, in Liu Yiqing’s 劉義慶 (403–444) Xuanyan ji 宣驗記 (Records Manifest Records of Manifest Miracles), the Avadāna tale yingwu jiuhuo 鸚鵡救火 (“the Parrot Putting Out the Fire”) that he collected is not only associated with Buddhism but can also be seen as a commentary on the turbulent times and a hint of literati optimism if we view it in the context of Liu Yiqing’s Youminglu 幽明錄 (Record of the Hidden and Visible Worlds). The literary elites of the Six Dynasties drew inspiration from Buddhist Avadāna sources and imaginatively mixed them with historical circumstances to create Chinese fiction with new intentions. The rich resources of Avadāna literature from India and the fable tradition in Chinese literature create cultural conditions for these two sources to combine and mutually develop, forming a world of literature with colorful and meaningful stories.

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales

К вопросу о происхождении легенд о Мелюзине и Белой змее

This paper examines the origins of two legends that are close in structure and content: the Western European tale of Melusine and the Chinese tale of the White Snake. The author accepts Ding Naitong's conclusion about the genetic link between the ancient story of the taming of a shape-shifting empousa (witch or lamia) by Apollonius of Tyana in the 3rd century biography written by Lucius Flavius Philostratus and a) late medieval Chinese tales of the White Snake, beginning with the story of Feng Menlong in the 17th century, and b) Western European stories of marriages with demonic women from the 12th and 13th centuries, including Walter Map’s Henno cum dentibus. On this basis, and with the help of additional data, mainly a fragment of Nizami’s Iskandar-nāmeh and two stories from Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) collection Yijian zhi (“Records of Yi Jian”), an attempt has been made to clarify the relationship between all these plots, as well as between them and the Melusine legend. The article raises the question of a possible connection between the figure of Xu Xuan, who was the protagonist of Feng Menglong’s tale, and Apollonius of Tyana as a character in a mythological narrative.

중국 고전 캐릭터의 현대적 재현과 운용 고찰 ― 애니메이션 <백사2: 청사의 시련>을 중심으로

중국의 애니메이션 산업은 빠른 성장을 보이며 중국의 문화산업 중 중요한 영역을 차지하고 있다. 주목할 것은, 제작된 장편 애니메이션 영화들이 중국 고전 서사 속 인물과 내용을 소재로 차용하고 있다는 점이다. 본문은 2019년 1월에 선보인 백사: 인연의 시작(白蛇: 缘起, White Snake)의 성공 후 만들어진 후속편 백사2: 청사의 시련(白蛇2：青蛇劫起, Green Snake)(이후백사2)의 내러티브를 분석하여, 애니메이션 서사 속 젠더 재현과 특징을 검토해보고자 한다. 두 편의 애니메이션 영화는 기존의 널리 알려진 ‘백사전’의 이야기를 바탕으로 현대적 감각에 맞게 이야기와 캐릭터를 새롭게 개작한 특징이 있다.BR 백사2는 불경 속 ‘수라도’를 차용하여 ‘수라성’을 배경으로 삼고 이를 SF적 디스토피아이자 약육강식의 도시 공간으로 설정하였다. 여성 캐릭터는 주인공을 돕고, 남성 캐릭터는 갈등을 유발하는 것으로 설정하였다. ‘백사전’ 속뱀의 이미지를 수라성 형상으로 적용되어 불교의 윤회 의식과 주인공의 만남과 이별을 연관시켰다. 이야기 속에서 주인공 소청은 여성으로서 남성에 의존하지 않고 스스로 강해져 시련을 극복하는 성장을 하게 되고, 소백 역시 남성캐릭터로 변해 소청과 새로운 관계를 맺으며 연대와 유대를 체현하고 있다.BR 1편 백사: 인연의 시작이 인간과 요괴의 경계와 구분에 대해 의문을 제기했다면, 2편 백사2: 청사의 시련은 남성과 여성 간의 관계에 의문을 제기하며 젠더에 대한 인식과 경계를 허문다. 백사2는 소청을 주인공으로 삼아, 오랜 기간 함께 수련하며 끈끈한 우정과 의리로 맺어진 소백-소청의 자매 관계에 집중해 그간 중국 애니메이션에선 찾아보기 힘든 ‘워맨스(Womance)’를 재현해냈다. 특히, 창의적인 여성 캐릭터 해석으로, 백사2는 여성 캐릭터의 주체 의식 및 유대, 연대의 필요성을 표현하며 이를 통해 중국 고전 서사의 현대적 변용에 새로운 가능성을 열어주었다.

A Chinese tale of three regions: a century of China in thousands of films

Over the past 70 years, because of their different historical and social contexts, the film industries of China’s three regions, namely mainland China, Taiwan, and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), have exhibited distinct characteristics that grow out of a single cultural root. Based on data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), this study investigates how the image of China has spread overseas through cultural products by applying big data analysis and machine learning methods to compare the content, topics, and attitudes toward the image of China disseminated by films originating in these three regions. The results show that the three areas have sought to express their subjectivity during periods of flux and striven to connect with the world in films. The macroscopic analysis of large-scale content allows the exploration of hidden cultural phenomena and compensates for the lack of objectivity of traditional research methods, while understanding embedded historical and cultural contexts of the three regions helps to clarify the regions’ ethnic, cultural, and emotional connections. Therefore, this study has contributed to cultural sociology both in topic and methodology.

Transitivity and Narrative Therapy in The Woman Warrior

<p>Since its publication in 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston’s <em>The Woman Warrior</em> has aroused widespread concerns and discussions in both China and abroad. This book is regarded as the pioneering work of Contemporary Chinese American literature and a masterpiece of feminism, relevant research serves to figure out the dilemma from which the Chinese American females suffered, as well as their struggle to fight against the racial and sexual discrimination attached to them. The present study is concerned with the identity of the Chinese Americans represented by Kingston herself as well as the author’s purport of adapting ancient Chinese tales, while ignoring the process of the protagonist’s self-awakening and how she employed narration to reconstruct her identity and getting access to education and power. This paper will focus on the therapeutic properties of narration in <em>The Woman Warrior</em> with the assistance of transitivity analysis, which illustrates that transitivity can reveal a character’s thinking pattern and that narration can help the narrator perceive the world in a more positive way and gain the necessary strength to fight for her own rights.</p>

Motive “Catching of the Moon” in Chinese and Ukrainian folk fairy tales about animals

Motive “Catching of the Moon” in Chinese and Ukrainian folk fairy tales about animals

ПЕРВЫЙ УКАЗАТЕЛЬ КИТАЙСКИХ СКАЗОК (1876)

The article examines the sources and specifics of the first attempt at a systematic description of Chinese folklore for comparative purposes. The index of Chinese folk tales in the 12th chapter of NB Dennis’s monograph “The Folklore of China” (1876) was based on a scheme by S. BaringGould, attached to the collection of English folklore by W. Henderson (1866). In turn, Baring-Gould improved the model created by J.-G. von Hahn that was published in the first volume of the Greek and Albanian tales’ collection (1864). The 1876 index is shorter than its predecessors: it has 15 “roots” (approximately corresponding to the tale types), 9 of which Dennis identified himself; von Hahn had 40 such types, and Baring-Gould had 51. If von Hahn and Dennis in their constructions considered the position of migrationists, Baring-Gould proceeded only from the early ideas of the mythological school about a single ancient source of IndoEuropean folklore. Dennis had a broader perspective that allowed him in his book to take into account the parallels between the mythological traditions of all inhabited continents; however, in the index, he compares Chinese tales mainly with Indo-European, which reflects the influence of the “Sino-Aryan” movement, popular among Sinologists in the 1870s

Twelve Chinese Zoosigns of Zodiak: Tradition and Modernity

The work is devoted to the origins and peculiarities of zodiac signs in the ancient Chinese tradition. The study is carried out within the frames of linguocultural approach towards interpreting animalistic metaphors, namely, the zoonyms of the twelve zodiac signs which in China, are used to characterize people concerning their date of birth and are passed on from generation to generation. Chinese zodiacs are based on the astronomic theory of constellations and human worship (idolatry) of totems. It focuses on the comparison of zoonym metaphors reflected as Chinese zodiac signs both in the Chinese and Russian languages proceeding from the theory of metaphor in modern cognitive aspect to detect similarities and differences, and as well, the study of cultural roots of zoonym metaphors revealed in the Chinese zodiac signs. The object of the study concerns zoonyms of zodiac signs possessing the relevant meaning in the Chinese zoological lexis. The work elaborates the definition of the notion zodiac, describes the processes of the genesis, formation and development of the Zodiac culture and its specific cultural relevance; according to the analysis undertaken, the means to differentiate twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and those of Chinese fairy tales, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, in Russian - animals were discussed and verified as to I.A. Krylovs fables. The conclusion states that metaphors are determined by the language itself, and linguocultures of various nations are reflected in specific metaphors and other peculiarities.

PECULIARITIES OF OF LEXICAL MEANS TRANSLATION IN THE TRANSLATION IN CHINESE FAIRY TALES INTO THE KYRGYZ LANGUAGE

This article examines the process of translating Chinese folk tales into the Kyrgyz language. Fairy tales vividly reflect the identity, culture, customs and customs of the people, the way of life of the people and their peculiarities of life. At the same time, fairy tales reflect the universal values that we inherited from an early age. Fairy tales also play an important role in the study of foreign languages by students who are interested in the content of the story. If students are interested in fairy tales, they easily overcome difficulties, master the material and develop strong speaking skills in a foreign language. For this reason, the topic of this article is very relevant. The purpose of this article is to describe the features of the translation of Chinese fairy tales and suggest how to improve its quality. A deep understanding of the original text, as well as reliance on the scientific sources of Chinese scientists, allows you to draw conclusions on its basis and make important recommendations for working with Chinese folklore texts.

Two Chinese tales of human rights– Mainland China’s and Taiwan’s external human rights strategies

ABSTRACT The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) have taken divergent paths in the area of human rights. Since the two leaders Xi Jinping and Tsai Ing-wen came to power, the differences in the area of human rights have further increased. The paper analyses and compares their external human rights strategies based on realist assumptions and the soft and hard power resources of the PRC and the ROC. The PRC’s objectives are to deflect international criticism of its human rights situation and to weaken the global human rights system and its underlying human rights norms. Taiwan’s objective is to use its record as a human rights leader in Asia to expand its limited international space and to strengthen its ties with other consolidated democracies and the global civil society.

Voice and the Sleepwalking Body

This article explores the relation between body and voice in the performance of a contemporary opera, Ficarra and Whittington's The Empress's Feet, based on a Chinese tale relating the origin of the practice of foot binding. The tale relates the ancient practice to cure a queen from bouts of sleepwalking that afflicted her. I initially explore the opera's complex formal structure, its central themes and the way it transforms the original tale. I will then develop some of the significant aspects, imaginary as well as factual, of both the practice of foot binding and the phenomenon of sleepwalking. I suggest that the opera not only relates itself thematically to the tale and through it to the practice of foot binding, but also suggests a further parallel between foot binding and a form of bodily mutilation that is associated with the development of the medium of opera in the West, namely the phenomenon of the castrato. The threefold consideration of foot binding, sleepwalking and the voice of the castrato will serve to reveal a moment of liberation, at the heart of the opera – call it the agency or voice given to the feet ‘unbound’. I will conclude with an account of a production of The Empress's Feet which I directed in 2014, based on the interpretation suggested in this article.

Does an Engineer Requires an Art of War?

Does an engineer requires an Art of War? There is no mechanical answer to the question, however the answer very much depends on how people view the "Art of War" none of the ancient Chinese tales has captured more beautifully than the essence of Sun Tzu's The Art of War (Dimovski et al., 2012; Emerson & Peter, 1994). It has been a premier classic of strategists. Who doesn't remember its famous quotes "to overcome others' armies without fighting is the best skills". It is not what engineers look for, the best solution at the most efficient cost?

Positive heroes of Russian and Chinese fairy tales (contrastive aspect)

Positive heroes of Russian and Chinese fairy tales (contrastive aspect)

«ДОСТОВЕРНОСТЬ» И «ВЫМЫСЕЛ» В ФОРМУЛАХ КИТАЙСКОЙ ВОЛШЕБНОЙ СКАЗКИ

The article is focused on studying the specific features of the Chinese fairytale on the example of its traditional formulas. Unlike the “classic” fairytale described by the “Propp formula” and the Aarne – Thompson system indexes, the Chinese fairytale is built upon the completely different type of the fairytale fantasy. That feature is manifesting primarily in its relation to non-textual reality (= reality), which directly affects the poetics and the style of the genre. The paper considers the structure and content of the initial and final formulas as one of the most important markers of the fairytale genre. When comparing the results obtained during the research with the conclusions drawn by N. Roshijanu in his study of traditional formulas of Romanian fairy tales, it turns out that the key feature of Chinese fairy tales is a strong binding to the fictional reality and the reality surrounding the storyteller and his listeners. In contrast with the “classic” fairytale which is built exclusively on the idea of being a fictional narrative, the Chinese fairytale does not insist on the uncertainty and non-authenticity of the events described in it. So that clearly illustrates, as B.L. Riftin wrote, the “earthiness” of Chinese fairytale fiction.

Ictional personification in russian and Chinese Folk Fairy Tales

Ictional personification in russian and Chinese Folk Fairy Tales

Dialogue of Cultures: Russian and Chinese Fairy Tales

Dialogue of Cultures: Russian and Chinese Fairy Tales