Spoken words vanish, written words endure

Archery Practice (From scanned copy of Chinese Stories)

While stationed as a missionary in the Kwangtung Province in Southern China, Adele M. Field heard many tales spoken in the Swatow vernacular by those who could not read or write. These tales furnished mental entertainment for her during many nights when travelling in a slow native boat, or sitting in a dim native hut. Field considered these "almond-eyed women and children" to be her "beloved companions in serious work and in needed recreation", and set about transcribing their stories to print.

In a similar fashion to the Arabian Nights anthology, the forty stories contained in her book, Chinese Fairy Tales, the Romance of The Strayed Arrow we will read today runs through the whole volume to a climactic finale.

Reading time: 9 minutes

THE STRAYED ARROW

IN the village of Grand Spur, there lived a poor couple, who had no children save one daughter, named Pearl. This little maid troubled her doting parents by begging that she might learn to read. ' They found great difficulty in satisfying her desire. They were themselves incompetent to teach her, and none of their neighbours were more learned ; they could not afford to hire a tutor for her, and there was no school in the village ; it was not customary to instruct girls in letters, and girls never associated with boys. But after much thought, under her entreaties, they solved the problem by dressing her in boys' clothes, finding lodging for her with her maternal grandmother, in a neighbouring town, and sending her to the private class of a learned master. There, as a boy, she daily pursued her studies with boys of her own age, winning praise from her teacher by diligence in learning, and gaining the admiration of her classmates by skill in athletic sports, particularly in hand- ling the bow. She always sat at a desk with a studious; generous boy, named Golden Branch, who was her chief companion in work and play, and who became the unwitting possessor of her heart.

The special plague of the two friends was a rude, sly boy, called Grouse, who often interrupted them in study hours, and sometimes spoiled their sport in playtime. They three, with a dozen other boys, went to the school- room before daylight, and conned their lessons silently, so as not to waken their teacher, who slept in an adjoining room. At dawn, the eldest pupil knocked at the teacher's door, and invited him to hear recitations. When the teacher was ready, each pupil in turn came and stood with his back to the teacher and his face to the wall, and repeated from memory a portion of the classics, after which his forenoon lesson was twice read to him by the teacher. Then the boys all went home to breakfast, eating boiled rice and salt fish from a bowl, with a pair of chopsticks held in the right hand.

After breakfast the boys returned to school, swept and dusted the room, washed the teacher's dishes, and then read, all aloud and each at his own task, till he was called to recite again. Writing followed, and while the younger boys sat at their desks tracing letters, with brushes, on translucent brown paper, the teacher explained to the older pupils the portions of the classics that they had that morning committed to memory. When the sun neared the meridian, the teacher wrote upon a slip of red paper the subject upon which each boy was to compose a couplet, and pasted the paper on the wall beside the door. This closed the forenoon session, and the boys went to their noonday meal of rice, stewed meats, and minced vegetables, and worked or played awhile, meditating upon the subject prescribed. It might be an admonition, such as "Go out with awe, come in with fear"; "To a parent be perfectly obedient, to the sovereign be completely loyal"; or it might be a proverb, such as "A polished up speech, and a corrected manuscript, are not nearly so neat as the first form" ; or "Tell a stranger only three tenths of what you know"; or it might be a passage from an ancient writer, such as " In hewing an axe-handle, the pattern is not far off"; or "A bad year cannot prove the cause of death to him whose stores of grain are large" ; or it might be any terse saying, sanctified by antiquity. On returning to the school-room, in the middle of the afternoon, the boys wrote out the couplets they had composed, and took them, one by one, to the teacher for comment and correction. They then read aloud till the sun was low, when they went to their suppers of rice and boiled vegetables, sauntered with their friends in the twilight, and slept before the curfew gun sounded from the city wall. The older boys sometimes returned to the court, where the teacher expounded a classic at eventide under a tree, and they often spent the evening together in the school-room, sitting around a lamp of pea-nut oil, with a wick of bulrush pith, studying, sipping tea, eating cakes, or telling stories. Their teacher frequently joined them, and one evening, excusing himself for repeating a story that had no moral, he told them about

THE FIVE QUEER BROTHERS

An old woman had five grown-up sons that looked just alike. The eldest could gulp up the ocean at a mouthful ; the second was hard enough to nick steel ; the third had extensible legs ; the fourth was unaffected by fire ; the fifth lived without breathing. They all concealed their peculiar traits, and their neighbours did not know they were queer.

The eldest supported the family by fishing, going alone to the sea, and bringing back loads of spoil. The neighbours often besought him to teach their sons how to fish, and he at last let all their boys go with him, one day, to learn his art. On reaching the shore, he sucked the sea into his mouth, and directed the boys to the dry bottom, to collect the fish. When he was tired of holding the water, he beckoned to the boys to return, but they were playing amongst strange objects, and paid no heed to him. When he could contain the sea no longer, he had to let it flow back into its former basin, and all the boys were drowned. As he went homeward, he passed the doors of the parents, who inquired how many fish their sons had caught, and how long they would be in coming back. He told them the facts, yet they would not excuse him, and they dragged him before the magistrate to account for the loss of their children. He defended himself by saying that he had not invited the boys to go with him, and had consented to their going only when the parents had repeatedly urged him; that, after the boys were on the ocean-bed, he had done his utmost to induce them to come ashore ; that he had held the water as long as he could, and had then put it in the sea-basin solely because nothing else would contain it. Not-withstanding this defence, the judge decided that, since he took the boys away and did not bring them back, he was guilty of murder, and sentenced him to decapitation. He entreated leave to pay, before his execution, one visit to his aged mother, and this was granted. He went alone and told his brothers of his doom, and the second brother returned in his stead to the judge, thanked him for having given him per- mission to perform a duty required by filial piety, and said he was then ready to die. He knelt with bowed head, and the headsman brought the knife down across the back of his neck, but the knife was nicked and the neck was left unscathed. A second knife, and a third of finer steel, were brought and tried by headsmen who were accustomed to sever heads clean off at one stroke. Having spoiled their best blades without marring his neck, they took him back to prison and informed the judge that the sentence could not be executed.

The judge then decreed that he should be dropped into the sea which covered his victims. When he heard this decision, he said that he took leave of his mother supposing that his head was to be cut off, and that, if he was to be drowned, he must go to her and make known his fate, and get her blessing anew. Permission being given, he went and told his brothers what had happened, and the third brother took the place of the second, and presented himself before the judge as the criminal that was to be sunk in the sea. He was carried far from shore and thrown overboard, but he stretched his legs till his feet touched bottom, and he stood with his head in the air. They hauled him aboard and took him farther from land, but still his extensible legs supported him above the waters. Then they sailed to mid-ocean, and cast him into its greatest depths, but his legs still lengthened so that he was not drowned. They brought him back to the judge, reported what had been done, and said that some other method of destroying him must be followed.

He was then condemned to death by being boiled in oil ; and while the caldron was being heated, he begged and obtained leave to go and tell his mother of his late survival, and of the manner in which he was soon to be taken off. His brothers having heard the latest judgment, the fourth one went to bear the penalty of the law, and was lowered into the kettle of boiling oil, where he disported himself as if in a tepid bath, and even asked the executioners to stir up the fire a little to increase the warmth. Finding that he could not be fried, he was remanded to prison.

Then the populace, the bereaved parents, and the magistrate joined in effort to invent a sure method of putting him to death. Water, fire, and sword all having failed, they finally fixed upon smothering him in a vast cream-cake. The whole country round made contributions of flour for the tough pastry, sugar for the viscid filling, and bricks for a huge oven ; and it was made and baked on a plain outside the city walls. Meanwhile the prisoner was allowed to go and bid his mother farewell, and the fifth brother secretly became his substitute. When the cake was done, a multitude of people, with oxen, horses, and ropes, dragged it to the execution ground, and within it the culprit was interred. As he was able to exist without air, he rested peacefully till the next midnight. Then he safely crawled forth, and returned to his home, where he dwelt happily for many years with his remarkable brothers.

The boys were so pleased with this tale that Grouse begged the teacher to tell another, without a moral, and he consented to do so the following evening, on condition that they would each tell one in turn. They all agreed to this, and the next nightfall, the tea being infused and set smoking in the middle of the square red table, with the tiny, saucer- less cups well rinsed and ready to receive it, the boys drew up the benches and sat near the teacher's straight-backed arm-chair, and he told them the story of... (to be continued...)

Notes and further reading

Adele Marion Fielde was a social activist, Baptist missionary, scientist, and writer. She is perhaps better known for her studies in the Swatow dialect and her book, Pagoda Shadows: Studies from Life in China. Fielde was also one of the founding members of the New York-based League for Political Education: a pro-suffrage group devoted to providing a forum where people of every rank and station could be educated on the important issues of the day.

We'll no doubt continue the thread of Pearl's story through The Strayed Arrow later on, but for those of you who can't wait to see how the tales progress, you can read Chinese Fairy Tales online or download in multiple eBook formats from The Internet Archive.