Essay Week 7: What Is Honor?

Since I wrote about African Traditions last week I decided to write from the Asia/ Pacific section this week, specifically from Chinese Fairy Tales. The stories were quite amusing and enjoyable, and some even had similar themes to stories I heard as a kid. In my readings I found that there is somewhat of a pattern among. In many of the tales there is a dominant father figure who punishes his children severely for their disobedience, and it is most often his daughter that his being punished. It occurs in several of the tales. I was curious if this might be something that happens in the majority of Chinese tales? There was also the theme of men as great conquerors. Women are viewed as dainty and pure, clothed in white. As the themes varied from tale to tale, I could not help but wonder if each grouping of themes was possibly from a different dynasty? Each dynasty was known for something, whether it be peace, war, art, etc. So I can only assume that the stories that were told during those times were a reflection on what time they were living in. The vast majority of these stories were so interesting to me because I could tell that they had been around for many, many years. Some were serious stories and some were just fun and entertaining. Personally, one of my favorites was The Favorite of Fortune and the Child of Ill Luck. Although I did not do my storytelling over this story, I did find it to be one of the more realistic love stories that I have heard. Most people think that you just fall in love and that passion remains forever, but love does not work that way. Sometimes you need to be more practical in your decisions about love and love is definitely something that always needs to be worked on. While I desperately wanted to do my storytelling over this fairy tale, I felt as though the retelling ideas I had did not do this story justice. 

A Love Story - 1903 (Wikipedia Commons)