Three books read in 2 days... plus a children's picture book written (it's not good but at least I've written something, so I've gotten my feet wet and now don't have to be intimidated.) I've also watched 4 episodes of Gilmore Girls, discovered their brilliant notion of S'moreos in a deleted scene and read far too many folk tales.
I read this evening the Chinese tale of how the rainbow came to be... and it's kooky, lemme tell ya.
Apparently a girl's father dressed her up and had her pretend to be a boy so she could go to school. Oh yeah and there was this boy, who was the same age and their fathers were friends, so they became friends, too. So they went to school and grew up together, and all the while he thought she was a boy. (Hey! It's Yentle!) And of course the girl eventually fell in love with the boy but was afraid to tell him. Then her father died and her sister-in-law arranged a marriage for the girl and made her come home. So the disguised girl went home but not before singing a song to the boy about how she is actually a girl and wants to marry the boy. He is a numbskull, apparently, cause he didn't get it, and basically says, "Ha! See ya next term, buddy!"
So then she went home and eventually the boy missed his pal, so he went to his friend's house to visit and found out his pal was actually a girl-- and then he discovers a whole bunch of love letters she'd written him, but he couldn't see her as she was in isolation before her marriage so basically he stopped eating and died. The girl heard the news and was devastated and on the day of her wedding the girl made the processional stop at the boy's grave and cried a whole lot and then said to the grave- "If we were supposed to be man and wife, open up" --and the grave did, she jumped in and it closed up again.
Now, dude who was supposed to marry the girl was understandably ticked off so what does he do? He has them dig up the boy's coffin. But the only thing inside were 2 white stones.. which they threw into the road cause they were so mad, but where they threw them, 2 shoots of bamboo immediately sprang up... and then they cut those down (at the same time) and then the stems "flew up to heaven" to become the rainbow... and the boy is red and the girl is blue (which seems kinda stupid since those colors are nowhere close to each other.)
If this were a European folk tale, the only people dying woud be the sister-in-law and the mean guy who was gonna marry the girl despite the fact she loved someone else. Oh China! I mean homeboy doesn't even try to save the girl from this marriage... he just finds out that she's a girl, finds the letters, and mopes himself to death. And for this he gets to become a rainbow?! Bah.
I think Europeans prized gumption a little more than the Chinese did back in the era of folk tales.
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