David Conger - Many Lands, Many Stories: Asian Folktales for Children

"REPRESENTATIVES

MY FIRST experience with an Asian culture came when I lived for two years in Japan some years ago. Like most suburban Americans, I had never really been exposed to any Asian cultures as I grew up. However, the longer I was in Japan, the more fascinated I became with the country and its people.

Upon returning to the United States, I began attending the University of Hawaii, where I took classes in Asian history, art, and literature. I became particularly interested in the massive amount of folklore that permeates most Asian cultures. One of my professors, J. P. Sharma, a native of India, liked the essays I did for his class and encouraged me to write this book. Taking his suggestion, I have compiled a collection of some of my favorite folktales from the Orient. Some of these stories were told to me by natives of the countries that the tales are from. Others are taken from classic Asian works such as the Bhagavad Gita. They are retold here for young readers.

Jo-o-ey! Hey, Joey! Are you going over to Mr. Miller's or not?" Joey opened his bedroom window and looked out at Kim, who was standing on the front lawn.

"I'm coming! Just a minute!" called out Joey, and he hurried down the stairs.

"Mom," he said, " I 'm going with Kim to Mr. Miller's."

"OK," his mother answered. "But I want both of you to be back before dark."

"We will," he said as he ran out the door.

During summer vacation Joey and his sister Kim went over to Mr. Miller's every night after dinner. In fact, all the kids in the neighborhood went to Mr. Miller's. This was because each evening when the sun was just starting to set and the crickets were starting to chirp, Mr. Miller sat out on his wide porch in his rocking chair and told stories.

But these weren't just regular stories. Mr. Miller had lived and traveled all over the world. Sometimes he told stories of things that had happened in his travels. But usually he told stories called "folktales." Folktales are stories that people tell about things that happened long, long ago. Parents tell them to their children, and then the children grow up and tell them to their children. In this way, folktales are passed from generation to generation. Some folktales are thousands of years old. Some are about witches and demons, while others are about animals and people. All the folktales that Mr. Miller told were fun to listen to.

When Joey and Kim got to Mr. Miller's house, all the kids in the neighborhood were already gathered on the lawnsome of them had their parents with them, too. Mr. Miller was sitting in his rocking chair with his two-year-old granddaughter, Melinda, on his lap. He rocked gently back and forth and looked thoughtfully at the evening sky. Everyone was quiet because they knew that he was just about to start his story.

"When I was young..., " Mr. Miller began. He almost always said that when he started a story. "When I was young, I lived in the country of Korea. Some people call Korea 'the Land of the Morning Calm.' While I lived there, I heard a story about why cats and dogs don't get along. It went something like this...."

ONCE A LONG time ago, in a village by a river, there lived a man named Shu who had a cat and a dog that he loved very much. The cat and dog were very good friends. All three of them lived happily in Shu's small house.

Shu made his living selling rice. All the people in the village bought their rice from Shu, but they could never figure out where he got his supply of rice from. Sometimes farmers from the valley would come with their oxcarts full of gleaming white rice and try to sell it to him, but he always sent them away with a kind word and a smile. He never bought rice from any of them.

Shu had once been very poor. One day, when he was down to his last bowl of rice, a traveling monk approached him and said, "Kind sir, I have traveled far today and I am very hungry. Could you spare a little of your rice for a poor servant of the Great Buddha?"

Shu only had one bowl of rice left, but he thought, "This monk must be very hungry from the long distance he has traveled today. I don't have much, but I'll share what I have with him." So Shu gave the monk his rice, and the monk ate all of it.

When he finished the rice, the monk said, "Thank you, sir. For your kindness I will give you a magic coin. When you put this coin in a barrel with a few grains of rice, the barrel will soon be full. And no matter how much rice you take from the barrel, it will always stay full." With that, the monk said good-bye and started down the road.

Well, Shu wanted to try out the magic coin right away, so he went to a friend's house and borrowed a few grains of rice, promising the friend a bowl of rice in return. He hurried home and put the rice and the coin in a barrel and covered it up. A short time later he lifted the cover and peeked inside. Sure enough, the barrel was full of small white grains of rice. Shu removed a bowlful of rice and took it over to his friend's house. When he got back home, he looked into the barrel again and saw that it was as full as before.

'For your kindness I will give you a magic coin,'' the monk said.

From then on Shu always had plenty of rice. He opened a small rice store and soon made a very comfortable living. So that was the secret of Shu's rice supply and why he never needed to buy from the farmers.

One day Shu opened his barrel and found that it wasn't full. No matter how long he waited, it didn't fill up again. Searching the barrel carefully, he found that his magic coin was gone.