Women’s Words Part Flesh And Blood

Once upon a time there were two brothers, who lived in the same house. And the big brother listened to his wife’s words, and because of them fell out with the little one. Summer had begun, and the time for sowing the high-growing millet had come. The little brother had no grain, and asked the big one to loan him some, and the big one ordered his wife to give it to him. But she took the grain, put it in a large pot and cooked it until it was done. Then she gave it to the little fellow. He knew nothing about it, and went and sowed his field with it. Yet, since the grain had been cooked, it did not sprout. Only a single grain of seed had not been cooked; so only a single sprout shot up. The little brother was hard-working and industrious by nature, and hence he watered and hoed the sprout all day long. And the sprout grew mightily, like a tree, and an ear of millet sprang up out of it like a canopy, large enough to shade half an acre of ground. In the fall the ear was ripe. Then the little brother took his ax and chopped it down. But no sooner had the ear fallen to the ground, than an enormous Roc came rushing down, took the ear in his beak and flew away. The little brother ran after him as far as the shore of the sea.

Then the bird turned and spoke to him like a human being, as follows: “You should not seek to harm me! What is this one ear worth to you? East of the sea is the isle of gold and silver. I will carry you across. There you may take whatever you want, and become very rich.”

The little brother was satisfied, and climbed on the bird’s back, and the latter told him to close his eyes. So he only heard the air whistling past his ears, as though he were driving through a strong wind, and beneath him the roar and surge of flood and waves. Suddenly the bird settled on a rock: “Here we are!” he said.

Then the little brother opened his eyes and looked about him: and on all sides he saw nothing but the radiance and shimmer of all sorts of white and yellow objects. He took about a dozen of the little things and hid them in his breast.

“Have you enough?” asked the Roc.

“Yes, I have enough,” he replied.

“That is well,” answered the bird. “Moderation protects one from harm.”

Then he once more took him up, and carried him back again.

When the little brother reached home, he bought himself a good piece of ground in the course of time, and became quite well to do.

But his brother was jealous of him, and said to him, harshly: “Where did you manage to steal the money?”

So the little one told him the whole truth of the matter. Then the big brother went home and took counsel with his wife.

“Nothing easier,” said his wife. “I will just cook grain again and keep back one seedling so that it is not done. Then you shall sow it, and we will see what happens.”

No sooner said than done. And sure enough, a single sprout shot up, and sure enough, the sprout bore a single ear of millet, and when harvest time came around, the Roc again appeared and carried it off in his beak. The big brother was pleased, and ran after him, and the Roc said the same thing he had said before, and carried the big brother to the island. There the big brother saw the gold and silver heaped up everywhere. The largest pieces were like hills, the small ones were like bricks, and the real tiny ones were like grains of sand. They blinded his eyes. He only regretted that he knew of no way by which he could move mountains. So he bent down and picked up as many pieces as possible.

The Roc said: “Now you have enough. You will overtax your strength.”

“Have patience but a little while longer,” said the big brother. “Do not be in such a hurry! I must get a few more pieces!”

And thus time passed.

The Roc again urged him to make haste: “The sun will appear in a moment,” said he, “and the sun is so hot it burns human beings up.”

“Wait just a little while longer,” said the big brother. But that very moment a red disk broke through the clouds with tremendous power. The Roc flew into the sea, stretched out both his wings, and beat the water with them in order to escape the heat. But the big brother was shrivelled up by the sun.

Note: This fairy-tale is traditionally narrated. The Roc is called _pong_ in Chinese, and the treasures on the island are spoken of as “all sorts of yellow and white objects” because the little fellow does not know that they are gold and silver.

II

Moral

Two brothers’ bond shatters when wives poison them with jealousy and lies. The protagonist learns that unchecked speech can destroy even sacred family ties.

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 carries Confucian anxiety about women’s influence in household hierarchy, particularly wives marrying into family. “Women’s Words” (nüyan) became proverbial as a dangerous force capable of dividing brothers – a core Confucian concern, since brother-loyalty was foundational to family stability. The tale likely reflects real tensions in patrilineal households where newcomer wives competed for resources and status. It draws from classical warnings (appearing in moral instruction texts and Liaozhai) that unfiltered speech, especially from marginal figures, generates chaos. Yet the tale’s metaphor – words literally tearing flesh and blood – suggests the power of narrative itself. It teaches both men to resist manipulation and women to speak with wisdom rather than malice.

Reflection & Discussion

1. How do the wives’ words damage the brothers?
2. Why do brothers believe these poisonous lies?
3. Can brothers repair their bond after such betrayal?

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:

• Stories that have survived for centuries have done so because their lessons still work.
• Every folk tale is also a time machine – a small window into how our ancestors thought about the world.
• Traditional stories remind us that wisdom belongs to many cultures. No single tradition holds all the answers.

Why This Story Still Matters

Women’s Words Part Flesh And Blood 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.