Han Feizi notes eels and silkworms look frightening like snakes and caterpillars, yet people handle them boldly for profit. Gain drives ordinary folks as brave as famed warriors Meng Ben and Zhuan Zhu.
An Youyu, an outstanding scholar from Shaanxi, was generous and loyal to his friends. He also loved to free captive animals. When he saw hunters capturing animals or birds, he would not hesitate to buy the game and set it free.
A certain Mr. Zhang was walking in a mountain valley and heard a loud noise from the cliffs. He climbed up the cliffs and saw a huge snake as thick as a big bowl tossing in the trees, its tail beating the willows and breaking willow branches. Its desperate tossing and turning suggested that…
The Loyal Mouse is a brief yet meaningful story from Strange Tales from Liaozhai, written by Pu Songling of the Qing Dynasty. This tale tells of the deep bond between two mice and the extraordinary courage and wisdom displayed by one mouse in attempting to save its companion.
According to Yang Tianyi, once he saw two mice coming out of a hole. One was swallowed by a snake. The other stared at the snake with its small, prickly ash-like eyes, looking very angry.
Liu, a juren, remembered things from his former lives (Note: Juren is the title conferred on those successful candidates at the provincial level in the imperial examination) and confided in my deceased cousin, Pu Wenfen, as they both became juren in the same year.
The Zhen bird (a mythical poisonous bird)) met a venomous snake on the road and advanced to peck at it.