Chinese Fables & Wisdom: Insights for Better Living

Title

en_US Chinese Fables & Wisdom: Insights for Better Living

Description

en_US First printing

en_US By Tom Te-Wu Ma

Creator

en_US Ma, Tom

Date

2016-01-25T19:03:12Z

en_US 1998-11

en_US 1997

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:03:12Z

Date Issued

en_US 1997

Abstract

en_US This is a curious book. It does contain a number of fables after the Chinese fashion: that is, they are anecdotes from the lives of virtuous or important people in history, often joined here with a contemporary application. The author's approach is chatty and personal. He is almost a homilist or a benign columnist. Anything from news items to Chinese history is grist for his mill. Each story begins on a right-hand page. The book finally helped me to find a good understanding for the traditional story A Snake Has No Feet (85). It has to do with gilding the lilly, with overperfecting a good work. There are a number of good stories here. The fisherman wins when the clam and the snipe get into a deadlock (13). The Eagle and the Donkey (17) is a variation on the fable of the eagle and tortoise. Here the eagle leads the eager donkey to a precipice and urges him to jump as the way to learn to fly; the eagle soon enjoys donkey-meat for lunch. The Monkey and the Elephant (25) represents a thought-provoking case. A monkey saves a mantis from an attacking bird, and then finds four small birds who are starving. Their mother returns to say that a monkey just kept her from bringing back some good mantis food for them. This author's moral: even the best actions may include some negative side-effects and will get the disapproval of some. Be sure to catch both parts of Chinese Child Figures Weight of Elephant (87). I first heard in a Greg Schissel homily the second story contained in We Sometimes Cross Solid Lines (131). A Chinese Man Who Had Two Wives (109) is challenging. When the man dies, the neighbor who had had a long-lasting affair with the younger wife married the older wife!

Identifier

en_US 1569801231

en_US 4245 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/79521

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Barricade Books Inc

en_US New York

Subject

en_US PN989.C5 M3 1997

en_US Chinese

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole