賣香屁
January 21st, 2006 by MarkI’ve gotten way too busy with teaching and curriculum work to do any serious Chinese studying for quite a while. Thanks to my experiences while learning Japanese, I’m still an extensive reading believer, though. I still have one last bastion of Chinese reading in my life- bathroom reading material. I’ve been going through a series of little 10 page stories for kids.
Since they’re supposed to be for learning English, there are 10 vocabulary words selected for each page. They’re actually useful occasionally. Then in the main part of the story, each page is split between Chinese and an English “translation” mangled so badly as to sometimes leave out whole blocks of two or three sentences, or go on rambling about things that weren’t even brought up in the Chinese half. That doesn’t matter though. The books are easy, and I’m still picking up a bit of fantasy/fable related vocab from them.
Most of the books are based on western stories such as The Three Little Pigs, or Snow White. What’s really interesting though, is the ones that aren’t. I just finished reading 賣香屁, or the “sell fragrant fart”. The story starts out normally enough.
Two brothers inherit a lot of property when their parents die. The other brother is a greedy bastard and takes almost all of the land, farm animals, and the house for himself, while leaving the younger one with a tiny barren field, a shed and a dog. The younger one is an all around good guy and hooks the dog up to a plow and goes about his work without complaints. When a merchant sees it, he bets him the dog can’t plow the field. The little brother wins, the big brother gets jealous, takes the dog, bets with it, loses his farm, and kills the dog in anger. Okay, so far.
Then, the younger brother buries the dog and a magic tree with bean pods hanging from it grows from the grave! Weird, but ok. Now here’s where the story goes wack. The boy starts eating the beans and gets gas… but his farts smell good! He then goes out and starts selling them on the streets and even impresses a government official enough with the “revitalizing powers” of his farts that he gets rewarded 120 gold pieces. The older, greedy brother then decided to steal some bean pods, and try to do the same thing. His farts smelled terrible though, so he ended up getting beaten by the provincial magistrate.
The moral of the story is… COMPLETELY BEYOND ME!!! The fact that this story somehow got grouped with so many classics, both western and eastern, makes me suspect this is a famous Chinese story. Can anyone verify this? JT? Battlepanda? I find the idea of little kids all learning this story a bit disturbing, but I guess it’s no less disturbing than anything Lewis Carroll wrote.
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January 22nd, 2006 at 10:17 am
I can verify that, indeed, I have read this story as a kid. How did it achieve its place in the pantheon of children’s literature in Taiwan? I don’t know.
January 22nd, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I think it would be great to look more at children’s books from countries foreign to your own. Coincidentally, I just saw a children’s book at the store with a cover that I liked so I read it real quick like…
The story of a boy who is born smaller then the size of an adult finger and never grows larger. One day he climbs a tree and sees the river goes all the way to the capitol city (Kyoto at this time) and after some convincing, he hops in a rice bowl and away he goes to Kyoto. Finds himself a nice rich Samurai’s house and quickly gets a job working for the beautiful maiden. One day they all go to Kiyomizu-dera together, and some huge red monster comes along and wants the beautiful maiden all to himself. After the other guards all run away, our little here is all that’s left. The monster swallows our hero whole, but being a persistent little twit, he stabs away at the monsters innards with his needle-for-a-katana. Makes a truce with the monster and stops stabbing in exchange for the maiden and his own safety and the monster runs away crying. The maiden is so happy that she uses her magical wish granting box (where did that come from all of a sudden I don’t know but it’s a serious plot hole!! hehe) to turn him into a real big adult. And boy does he ever! And so handsome!! (haa) He becomes a real samurai and they get married and live happily ever after.
I think it’s interesting how parts of this story are similar to parts of many other stories in other cultures around the world. Does it mean that all stories all came from one origin, or all people did? Or perhaps as humans we all share common logical traits? I dunno, I didn’t think about it that deeply, but it’s still interesting. And I thought I’d share as you shared your story
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Hi Darin,
I know the story you’re telling. The item which made the boy bigger should be a magical hammer which the monster dropped as he tried to run away. I’ll leave a reference for you to have a look. It’s an old style of writing, so you might find it tricky to read first…
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~Taiju/issun.htm
Here’s the relevant part. I omitted the part of the text which you might find it hard to read.
鬼もおぢをののきて（中略）打出の小槌、杖しもつ〔しもとの訛。鞭〕、何に至るまで打捨てて、（中略）逃げにけり。
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:28 am
Darin, have you ever read any Japanese stories like 賣香屁?
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Mark, I don’t know of any but I haven’t read many Japanese children’s stories….
Keiji, Yea that’s the name, 一寸法師！ I didn’t really read through it all that carefully as I just saw it in a book store, but that does clear it up more rather then the magical box thingy just appearing out of no where.
January 25th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Your Japanese seems to be at a much better level than my Chinese is. If I were you, I’d be reading all the kids stories I could get my hands on. It’ll probably take you to the next level.
January 25th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Sorry, dude! I was only able to reply just now.
is indeed a funny tale. Yeah, I heard that too when I was little. You probably know how kids love joking about farting here. The story probably originiated from China, who knows?
But I guess the moral is “天公疼憨人”(tī gōng tià gŏng láng-in Taiwanese) which means “(Chinese)God bless those who are less fortunate but kind beings”. So I guess no matter how ABSURB they might sound, may it a plowing dog or a fragrant fart, god favours the good. Kids love it and sometimes they would pretends to be the character in the book shouting “賣香屁! 賣香屁!” which makes me laugh.
Indeed, reading children stories can REALLY improves one’s knowledge for a language as well as its culture.
January 25th, 2006 at 10:19 am
BTW, “The Inch-tall Monk” is also known here in Taiwan. They showed the cartoon on TV long ago. Well, the plots are a bit different though. But, yeah, you can find it in the bookstore here too.