SuaveG – The Gentle Path

Chinese mythology, folktales, and literature

satire

  • The Old Charcoal Seller

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    Ana

    – By Bai Juyi An old man, his face dusty and smudged with soot and ash,Burning charcoal in the Southern Mountains, his temples streaked with gray.Selling charcoal, what does he get?Just clothes for his body and food for his mouth.

  • Sequel to a Dream

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    Ana

    After winning the title of jinshi, (Tran. Note: Jinshi was a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination; juren was a successful candidate at the provincial level) Juren Zeng and several others who had passed the examination went for an excursion in the suburbs of the provincial capital.

  • The magic pear-tree: A satire on greed in “Planting Pears”

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    Ana

    Strange Tales from Liaozhai Studio: Planting Pears is a concise yet profound fable. Through its fantastical plot–“selling pears,” “begging for a pear,” and “magically growing a pear-tree”–it delivers biting satire on human greed, stinginess, and karmic retribution.

  • Pu Songling and Liaozhai

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    Ana

    Pu Songling was a Qing Dynasty scholar, storyteller, and chronicler of the uncanny, whose life embodied the frustrations of China’s educated class.

  • Will you Flatter me?

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    Ana

    A rigid elder and a cunning elder were talking together.

  • Literate tigers and illiterate people

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    Ana

    When Yang Shuxian was in office in Jingzhou, the tigers there were a scourge to the people. So Yang had an edict engraved on a big rock on a nearby mountain, ordering the tigers to leave the place.