Strange Tales from Liaozhai Studio’s “Chopping the Python” (Hacking the Boa) recounts the ordeal of two Hu brothers in remote mountains.
When an enormous python partially swallows the elder brother, the younger — initially paralyzed by terror — witnesses the serpent devouring his sibling. Overcoming fear, he seizes a woodcutting axe, attacks the python, and miraculously rescues the maimed brother. Though losing his nose and ears to the serpent’s jaws, the elder survives after prolonged healing. The tale concludes by honoring the younger brother’s devotion, noting that even among uneducated peasants, such selfless fraternal bonds exist.
Allegorical Meaning
Fraternal Loyalty Transcending Fear
The visceral core of the tale celebrates blood-deep kinship (“thicker than water”). The younger brother’s transition from flight to fight — risking death to save his sibling — embodies the Confucian ideal of brotherly love, where familial duty overrides self-preservation.
Primordial Courage in Crisis
The youth’s instinctual fear evolves into sacrificial bravery. His axe — a humble peasant’s tool — becomes a weapon of defiance, symbolizing how ordinary individuals summon extraordinary mettle when protecting loved ones. This mirrors Mencius’ assertion that moral courage arises “in the space between a blinked eye and a clenched fist.”
Radiating Humanity from the Margins
By centering impoverished peasants, Pu Songling illuminates moral brilliance in society’s overlooked corners. The brothers’ bond — raw, unconditional, stripped of scholarly pretension — reveals that nobility resides not in status but in actions: the younger brother’s devotion affirms humanity’s luminous potential.
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