A Chinese Fairy Tale One recent assignment that Brian gave his students was to translate a Chinese fairy tale into English and perform it in his Speech and Drama class. Watching these student performances has been one of the highlights of this semester for Brian! And he learned about some fascinating Chinese traditional stories. Annie's favorite one will be in our next print newsletter (hitting your mailbox in late June!), some are posted on our blog (see link at right), and Brian's favorite is the following: Many years ago there was more than
one sun in the sky. In fact, there were
ten suns. When the world was created, each
sun had its place, and they took turns shining in the sky, one at a time. However, over the years, the suns became lazy
and all 10 suns began to travel across the sky together, which caused much
drought and devastation over the earth because of their great heat.
The Heavenly Emperor god noticed the problems that the ten suns were
causing. He came down to speak to the
greatest hunter on earth, a man called Houyi, and instructed Houyi to shoot out
nine of the suns. To accomplish the
task, the Heavenly Emperor god gave Houyi a red bow and nine white arrows. Houyi was an expert marksman and accomplished
the task with little difficulty. Nine
suns were shot out, so that only one sun remained. All the people rejoiced that they would no
longer suffer from the intense heat of 10 suns.
As a reward for completing his task, the Heavenly Emperor god gave Houyi a magic elixir that would give eternal life and beauty to whoever drank it. Houyi thought the elixir was too precious to drink himself, so he kept it safely and secretly inside his home. However, Houyi’s wife, called Chang Er, knew about the elixir. Because she was very vain and didn’t want to grow old and lose her beauty, one day Chang Er decided to drink all of the magic elixir. To her surprise, the elixir changed her from a human into a goddess, and she began to float up off of the earth and towards the heavens. Houyi saw his wife floating away and called out after her, but there was nothing that he could do to prevent Chang Er from floating into the sky. When Chang Er reached the heavens, the other gods and goddesses asked her how she got there. When she told them that she had drunk all of the magic elixir, the gods and goddesses became very angry with her and banished her to live alone in the coldest place in the heavens – the moon. On the moon, no one could behold Chang Er’s eternal beauty. And on the earth Houyi grieved the loss of his wife. Now, every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival in China, people bake and eat moon cakes to commemorate the story of Houyi and Chang Er. Where are the Smiths? Until June 26th, we'll be in China. Please lift us up in our last month here, as there are many people to see and much to do (see sidebar). On June 27th, we'll fly to Los Angeles where we'll be visiting partner assemblies and friends and looking for an apartment to rent (also a thought request -- see sidebar). After apartment hunting, we'll be in Missouri and Iowa from July 9th - 23rd. We'll also be spending some time in Colorado and New Mexico during the last week of July before driving back to California so that Brian can start his new job and we can move into our new place on August 1st. If you'll be anywhere near those places, we'd love to meet up with you. Our travel plans are fairly flexible because, unlike previous summers, we'll traveling by car (which we also need to buy -- please intercede for us about that, too). Thank you very much for keeping in touch with us! We do not yet have USA telephone numbers, so the best way to reach us is by e-mail. When you have a moment, we'd love to hear about your summer plans and how we can be lifting you up, too. Happy Summer! -- Brian, Annie, and Junia Please note that our e-mail addresses will stay the same until August, when we will change to new e-mail accounts. And we're on Facebook! |