The Dangerous Reward

Once upon a time a man named Hu-Wu-Bau, who lived near the Great Mountain, went walking there one day. And there, under a tree, he met a messenger in a red robe who called out to him: “The Lord of the Great Mountain would like to see you!” The man was much frightened, but dared offer no objection. The messenger bade him shut his eyes, and when he was allowed to open them again after a short time, he found himself standing before a lofty palace. He entered it to see the god. The latter had a meal prepared for him and said: “I only sent for you to-day because I had heard you intended traveling to the West. And in that case I should like to give you a letter to take to my daughter.”

“But where is your daughter?” asked the man.

“She is married to the river-god,” was the reply. “All you need to do is to take along the letter lying there. When you reach the middle of the Yellow River, beat against the side of the ship and call out: ‘Greencoat!’ Then some one will appear and take the letter from you.”

And with these words he handed Hu-Wu-Bau the letter, and he was taken back again to the upper world.

When he came to the Yellow River on his journey, he did what the Lord of the Great Mountain had told him, and cried: “Greencoat!” And sure enough, a girl in green garments rose from the water, took him by the hand and told him to close his eyes. Then she led him into the palace of the river-god and he delivered the letter. The river-god entertained him splendidly, and thanked him as best he knew how. At parting he said: “I am grateful that you have made this long journey to see me. I have nothing to give you, however, save this pair of green silk shoes. While you are wearing them you can keep on walking as long as you like and never grow weary. And they will give you the second sight, so that you will be able to see the spirits and gods.”

The man thanked him for the gift and returned to his ship. He continued on his journey to the West, and after a year had passed, came back again. When he reached the Great Mountain, he thought it would be fit and proper to report to the god. So he once more knocked against the tree and gave his name. In a moment the red-clad messenger appeared and led him to the Lord of the Mountain. So he reported that he had delivered the letter to the river-god, and how all things were there, and the Lord of the Mountain thanked him. During the meal which the god had prepared for him, he withdrew for a few moments to a quiet spot. Suddenly he saw his deceased father, bound and loaded with chains, who together with several hundred other criminals, was doing menial labor.

Moved to tears, he asked: “O my father, why are you here?”

His father replied: “During my life on earth I happened to tread on bread, hence I was condemned to hard labor at this spot. I have passed two years in this manner, yet their bitterness has been unspeakable. Since you are acquainted with the Lord of the Mountain, you might plead for me, and beg him to excuse me from this task and make me the field-god in our village.”

His son promised to do so, and went back and pleaded with the Lord of the Mountain as he had agreed. The latter seemed inclined to listen to his prayer, yet said warningly: “The quick and the dead tread different paths. It is not well for the dead and the living to abide near one another permanently.”

The man returned home. Yet, in about a year’s time nearly all his children had died. In the terror of his heart he turned to the Lord of the Great Mountain. He beat on the tree; the red-coat came and led him into the palace. There he told of his misfortune and begged the god to protect him. The Lord of the Mountain smiled: “Did I not tell you in the start that the quick and the dead tread different paths, and that it is not well if they abide near each other permanently? Now you see what has happened!” Yet he sent his messenger to fetch the man’s father. The father came and the god spake to him as follows: “I forgave you your offense and sent you back to your home as a field-god. It was your duty to bring happiness to your family. Instead, nearly all of your grand-children have died off. Why is this?”

And the father said: “I had been away from home so long that I was overjoyed to return. Besides I had meat and drink in overflowing measure. So I thought of my little grand-children and called them to me.”

Then the Lord of the Great Mountain appointed another field-god for that village, and also gave the father another place. And from that time no further misfortune happened to the family of Hu-Wu-Bau.

Note: The Lord of the Great Mountain was originally Huang Fe-Hu, a faithful servant of the tyrant Dschou-Sin. Because of an insult offered him, he joined King Wu, and when the latter overcame the tyrant, was made Lord of the Mountain, and overlord of the ten princes of the nether world.

LII

Moral

Ill-gotten rewards carry hidden dangers and corrupting consequences that exceed initial benefits. Hu-Wu-Bau learned that stolen prosperity breeds misfortune, while virtuous living provides sustainable security. Justice ultimately prevails; dishonest gains collapse under moral weight.

Historical & Cultural Context

Chinese folk tales carry thousands of years of Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist moral thought, featuring dragons, immortals, filial sons, clever scholars and mountain-dwelling sages whose stories spread along the Silk Road and into East Asia.

This tale reflects Buddhist karma doctrine prevalent in classical Chinese literature: unethical acquisition generates proportional suffering. The narrative aligns with Liaozhai morality tales where supernatural consequences punish theft and deception. Great Mountain settings invoke sacred geography where heaven’s justice operates transparently. Eberhard’s Folktales document similar cautionary narratives emphasizing righteous living’s security versus crime’s precarious existence. Tang dynasty framing suggests official justice systems ultimately align with cosmic moral law, reinforcing Confucian ethics that personal virtue and state order intertwine.

Reflection & Discussion

1. Why do stolen gains ultimately bring more suffering than honest poverty?
2. How does conscience and moral awareness create internal punishment?
3. What makes righteous living truly secure despite initial hardship?

Did You Know?

• Chinese folk tales date back over 4,000 years, making them among the oldest storytelling traditions in the world.
• Dragons in Chinese folklore are benevolent creatures associated with wisdom, power, and good fortune.
• The Chinese Zodiac, featuring twelve animals, originated from ancient folk tales about a great race organized by the Jade Emperor.

What This Tale Teaches Us Today

Old stories keep their power because their lessons never stop being useful. Here is how this one still applies:

• Reading folk tales aloud to children builds vocabulary, imagination, and a sense of cultural inheritance.
• Folk tales teach ethics without lecturing. A good story can reshape a mind more powerfully than any rule.
• Shared stories are one of the strongest bonds within any community – families, cultures, or whole nations.

Why This Story Still Matters

The Dangerous Reward joins a vast global library of folk tales that human beings have been telling one another for thousands of years. Every culture has produced its own stories, but the deepest themes – courage, kindness, cleverness, loyalty, the cost of greed – appear again and again in different clothes. Modern readers who spend time with folk tales inherit something precious: a sense that people have always wrestled with the same basic questions, and that good stories can still help us find good answers. That is why these tales persist. Each one is a small tool for living, handed down quietly through generations.

Cultural Context and Continuing Influence

Folk tales like this one survived for hundreds of years through oral storytelling before any scholar thought to write them down. Grandparents told them to grandchildren, travelers traded them along roads and rivers, and mothers repeated them to babies who would one day repeat them to their own children. Each small retelling sharpened the story, discarded unnecessary parts, and polished the essential lesson. That long process of refinement is why a good folk tale feels so weighty – it has been shaped by thousands of listeners across generations, each contributing something small to the story we read today.

Modern readers sometimes wonder whether folk tales are still relevant in an age of apps and smartphones. The answer is yes, perhaps more than ever. The technology changes, but the underlying questions – about kindness, courage, loyalty, greed, family, fear, love – do not. These are the same questions that children asked around a fire in ancient India, around a hearth in medieval Ireland, around a campfire in 19th-century Korea. And they are the same questions children ask their parents today, just phrased differently. That is why a family that reads folk tales together is doing real cultural and emotional work, not simply entertaining itself.

Reading Folk Tales With Children

Reading folk tales aloud to children is one of the oldest and most effective forms of moral education. Unlike a lecture or a rule, a story slides past a child’s natural resistance and plants its lesson in the imagination, where it quietly grows. Years later, when the child meets a real situation that resembles the story – a bully at school, a dishonest coworker, a moment of temptation – the old tale rises to the surface of memory and offers guidance. That is why parents and teachers across every culture have trusted stories to do the work of raising good humans, long before formal schools or textbooks existed.

When reading this story with a young listener, try pausing at key moments and asking what the child thinks will happen next. Let them guess, even if they are wrong. That small act of prediction turns a passive listener into an active thinker. After the story ends, a simple open question – “What would you have done?” or “Who do you think was the smartest character?” – invites the child to connect the tale to their own life. Those conversations are where real learning happens, not during the reading itself but in the quiet moments that follow.

Older children and teenagers sometimes think they have outgrown folk tales. In reality, the best tales only deepen with age. A ten-year-old hears the surface plot; a fifteen-year-old notices the irony; a twenty-year-old sees the economic and political pressures on the characters; a forty-year-old understands the parents in the story for the first time. A good folk tale is a gift that keeps unfolding for decades. Families who read and reread the same stories across the years discover this naturally, and pass the discovery down.