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Anne Kauth's picture

Yeh-Shen

My tale that interested me most was Yeh-Shen, the Chinese Cinderella story. Morals in fairy tales translate into every language and I never really considered that tales like Cinderella or Briar Rose cannot be claimed by one country or culture. I found the Yeh-Shen tale to be the most beautiful of the three Cinderella stories as well as the most profound for me. It is harsher than the story I grew up with because Yeh-Shen violently loses her friend the fish and in the end the step mother and sister are harshly punished, but the descriptions are rich and really bring to life a vivid picture of the fairy tale which makes the moral that much more important. I really enjoyed this reading assignment, I have never read so many tales from different cultures and it was amazing to compare the similarites and differences in storytelling.

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