Fables and idioms with a lesson is a staple of Chinese literature and folklore. Even as a kid in America, I read simple, child-friendly, Chinese fables. These fables, like all fables, had a lesson at the end, some more dramatic than others.
- Little Horse Crosses the River (小马过河- xiao ma guo he)
- The classic story. My friend says that her dad would just say this to her at times as a reference to its lesson.
- The story is about a little horse who has to cross a river, but he’s kind of afraid about how deep the river will be so he asks a passing ox. The ox tells the horse that the river’s really shallow, so the horse prepares to cross it. However, a mouse runs up and tells the horse to not cross it because the river’s really deep and he will drown. Conflicted, the horse goes home and asks his mom what to do. His mom simply says, “Try it yourself.” So moral of the story is: try things for yourself and don’t take other’s word for it.
- Crow Drinking Water (乌鸦喝水- wu ya he shui)
- An acknowledgement of how smart crows really are.
- This is an Aesop fable called the Crow and the Pitcher. A crow is thirsty, and he finds a pitcher, but the water is too far down for him to reach. So, he looks around and sees many small stones. By taking the stones and plopping them into the pitcher, the crow causes the water level to rise. Once the water is high enough, he is able to drink. The moral is a bit vague for me but it’s: use your smarts and think hard to achieve your goal.
- I think it has been proven that crows actually are smart enough to do this in real life.
- Fox Dividing the Meat (狐狸分肉- hu li fen rou)
- Apparently, a bit of an obscure, Chinese fable.
- Two dogs find a piece of meat by the roadside. They argue over who gets to split the meat evenly between the two. A clever fox comes along and offers to be the third party that splits the meat for them. So, the fox gets started on dividing the meat. The dogs don’t think that it’s evenly divided, so they tell the fox to take off the extra meat whenever there seems to be more on one piece. The extra meat all ends up in the fox’s stomach. In the end, the pieces of meat are split into tiny, tiny portions for the dogs, while the fox walks away with a stomach full of delicious meat. Moral of the story: think with your head, so you don’t get tricked by other people.
- The Frog in the Well (井底之蛙- jing di zhi wa)
- A frog lives his entire life at the bottom of a well, only able to see the circle of sky out the well’s opening. He lives in the well happily, thinking that it is the greatest place to live. One day, a turtle walks by and seeing the frog basking in the rather small well, asks the frog if he has ever seen the vast ocean. The frog realizes that he has never seen the ocean that lies beyond his tiny well. So, this story is about not being limited by your singular experiences, there’s much more out there to see and explore.
- Kill the Chicken for Its Eggs (杀鸡取卵- sha ji qu luan)
- Tragedy at its finest
A poor husband and wife live together with their single chicken. This chicken has not laid a single egg for a long time. But they don’t kill the chicken, hoping that eventually, it’ll lay eggs for them. One day, the chicken finally lays an egg. But it’s not a regular egg; it’s a gold egg. The couple take it to the market to sell it for loads of money. They are ecstatic about their fortune-generating chicken, but they can’t wait for the chicken to lay more eggs. So, they end up killing the chicken, thinking that there are piles of golden eggs just stored in the chicken body. But of course, it’s just chicken guts and no golden eggs, so they blow their chance at being rich. Being greedy and impatient is never the ans