Ancient tales and folklore of China

Bracken Books, 1986 Book. Good. Hardcover. English text; Hardcover (cloth with dust jacket); 16,5 x 22,4 cm; 1,174 Kg; 454 pages with 32 colour illustrations. ; Facsmile of the original edition.; Used book with signs of wear. Minor signs of wear on the dust jacket, which is price clipped. Previous owner dedication and stamp on front free endpaper. The interior is in very good condition.; To the majority of the western world the land of China and its people remain a mystery: vast, unknown, incomprehensible. But China contains one of the finest civilisations of the world and has its own heroes, folk, tales and traditions as the western world has the legends of the Nibelungs and King Arthur.This wonderful book of China and her people was written in 1922 by Edward Werner. He spent many years as British Consul in Foochow and made a profound study of the Chinese. At the start of the book he gives a brief description of the Chinese people setting the tales in their social context. Then he narrates the creation myth according to the Chinese and goes on to explain the Chinese gods, how they came to power and how they rule. After that he tells all the main Chinese myths, those of the elements, the myths of the stars, the myths of thunder, lightning, wind and rain, the myths of water and fire. Then he tells the stories of the eight immortals, the Guardian of the Gates of heaven, the battle of the gods and how the monkey became a god. One of the main features of the tales of China is their purity. This is beautifully illustrated in the story of Shen I, the divine archer, whose wife, Heng O, stole his pill of immortality and was transformed into the toad who appears upon the face of the moon. Not only was Heng O spared but Shen I himself was granted immortality by the Gods and was sent to dwell in the solar palace and from that time onwards the sun and the moon each had their own ruling sovereign. It would be true to say that if the real test of greatness is purity and justice, then Chinese myth must be placed among the greatest of them all; for it is not obscene and it is invariably just..