Week 9 Story: The Ever-Shrinking City

Once there was a well-populated fortress city surrounded by acres of open savanna. The people of the city didn’t know much of keeping livestock, and preferred to hunt for their food. For generations this was very lucrative. Bands of hunters would travel the surrounding region with falcons and dogs, always bringing back plenty of meat.

A falconer on a horse. (Wikimedia Commons)

After a while, these hunts would begin to return less and less meat for the city’s population. When at last the once-plentiful large game was made extinct, there was much bickering among the city’s leaders. Some suggested a new vegetarian diet. Others wanted to pack up and move to some untouched land. At last, a magician offered a solution.

“By my magic, I can make this city—and everyone in it—a quarter of the size that it is now. A family might then survive a month on a single prairie dog.”

There was widespread agreement that nobody would be able to tell the difference between the old and new sizes except where hunting was concerned. After all, there were no nearby cities to contend with. So the population agreed that the magician should shrink the city. When he did, all was well for years. People feasted on rats and prairie dogs, but otherwise carried on as though nothing had changed.

Eventually, even the small mammals were driven to extinction and again the city went hungry. The people appealed to the magician to use his magic once more, so that the city would be a thirtieth of its original size. This way, they could live on the plentiful bugs and worms. The magician agreed, and again the city had plenty to eat once the people grew accustomed to eating insects.

Of course, the hunters, with their tiny falcons and dogs, were so effective in their work that there were soon be no bugs to be found nearby. The magician had unfortunately by then drowned in a puddle, so there was no option left but to become a tiny nomadic hunters, clearing distant lands of bugs and vermin.



Author’s note: the Chinese myth “The Little Hunting Dog” features a travelling band of tiny soldiers who hunt down flies and other bugs. The story doesn’t give any explanation about where they come from, so I decided to offer a backstory. The ending of my story is consistent with a common theme of the Chinese myths that I read, which tend to have a “and that’s that” abrupt closing.


Bibliography. The Chinese Fairy Book, edited by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens. Web Link.

Reading Notes: Chinese Fairy Tales (Part B)

Today's reading was thematically similar to Part A in that most stories didn't have a moral message, and were instead just depictions of supernatural events. Many of the stories seemed to end abruptly with a twist, as in the "fox fire" story.

The stories that I enjoyed the most were those which left a lot up in the air. "The Night on the Battlefield" and "The Little Hunting Dog" both included zany supernatural events with little to no explanation as to why. I think this method of storytelling best captures the "otherworldly", because I think we're more drawn in by what we don't know than what we know.

Several stories featured ogres, which seemed much like demons. I thought for sure that the story of "The Maiden Who was Stolen Away" would end up with a Shrek-like ending, but it looks like ogres are reviled enough in these myths that I got my hopes up for nothing.

A Chinese ogre mask. (Flickr)

Bibliography. The Chinese Fairy Book, edited by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens. Web Link.

Reading Notes: Chinese Fairy Tales (Part A)

I was surprised that many of these Chinese fairy tales have no discernible moral message. The story about the father who leaves his daughters in the mountains ends up with a happy ending for everybody, leaving no indication that the father learned any kind of lesson.

The story of "The Panther" was amusing for two reasons. First, it was heavily reminiscent of "Little Red Riding Hood", to the point that there must have been some cross-cultural influence in one of the two stories. Second, the ending of the story called to mind a Tom-and-Jerry-esque skit of physical humor as the panther falls for one pratfall after another.

Lastly, it was interesting that in two of the stories there were said to once have been ten suns. Both stories offer distinct explanations for how the suns were brought down except one, which begs the questions of which story came first or why the ten suns were so significant in myth.

A statue of Guan Di, god of war (Wikimedia Commons)

Bibliography. The Chinese Fairy Book, edited by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens. Web Link.