Asian Children's Favorite Stories

by David Conger

  Slipping it off with his beak, Lawin held out the ring and Ganador took it. “Yes, of course,” Lawin said, watching as Ganador carefully placed the ring on his toe. “I trust you.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Ganador said, nodding his head up and down several times. “I promise to return it the next time you drop in.”

  “Well, then, I’m off,” said Lawin, flapping his broad wings and pushing off from the perch. “See you tomorrow!”

  Ganador crowed a long good-bye. He watched the hawk’s silhouette grow smaller and smaller as Lawin flew high up into the clear blue sky. A second later he was just a tiny speck, and then he disappeared altogether.

  Ganador hopped off his perch and rushed over to the brood pen, half-running and half-flying. He was terribly excited to show the ring to Inahin. As he expected, she fell in love with the ring as soon as she laid eyes on it.

  “But it’s not ours to keep,” Ganador was sure to explain to her. “It belongs to Lawin.”

  The sight of the ring on her toe thrilled Inahin, and she clucked in pleasure as she raised her leg up to admire it. “Oh, it’s so beautiful and heavy! I’m going out right now to show everyone!” She rushed off after giving Ganador a peck on the cheek.

  Ganador chuckled, delighted that he had made his pretty wife so happy. “Bok, bok, bo-ok!” he cried out after her.

  But only minutes after Inahin had left her nest, Ganador heard her cry out in distress. Dust flying everywhere, he flew out of the shed in a panic to find out what happened. He soon discovered that Inahin had dropped the ring on the ground and was now frantically scratching the soil in search of it.

  “Bak, bak, bak, bak!” she was saying in a high-pitched, panicked voice. “But I dropped it right here! How can it be lost?”

  Ganador swallowed nervously. He could tell by the way her tail was wiggling that she was upset. Hardly anything upset Inahin.

  “Calm down,” he told her, even though he, too, was anything but calm. “We’ll find it. We will.”

  Pretty soon all Inahin’s sisters and cousins had joined the mission to find the ring. With eyes cast downward and heads bowed, all the chickens carefully sifted through the dirt in the pen. Even after the sun went down, they continued to look.

  When the sun rose the next day and they still hadn’t found the ring, Ganador began to wonder if Lawin would challenge him to a fight once he learned it was missing. The thought filled him with dread. He had retired from fighting long ago, and he was in no shape to be taking on a hawk! Still, he knew it was his duty to protect his roost, and he would have to fight if challenged.

  In the early afternoon Lawin returned. He was very upset when Ganador told him the ring was lost. “I don’t believe you. You are hiding it,” Lawin said angrily.

  “Now, wait just a minute,” Ganador said, puffing out his chest and raising the feathers around his neck defensively.

  “If you don’t return it,” Lawin said, straightening to his full height. “I am going to eat your chicks one by one until they’re all gone!”

  Ganador felt the ground hard beneath him and dug his claws into it nervously. “You got to believe me, Lawin,” he said, begging. “It was an accident. We dropped the ring. You can see for yourself that we’re looking for it.”

  Without warning, Lawin spread his wings and rocketed into the sky before Ganador could stop him. The great hawk circled menacingly before swiftly swooping down, and—despite Ganador’s best effort to block him—plucking one of the baby chicks right off the ground with his giant talons. Off he flew, clutching the chick.

  Ganador and Inahin never recovered from the heartbreak caused by the lost ring, and they told their story again and again. Soon it was legend in the barnyard. To this day when we see roosters, hens, and even baby chickens scratching at the ground with their heads bowed down, they are searching for Lawin’s ring. They have never stopped trying to find it because every now and then Lawin swoops down and steals another chick.

  Liang and His Magic Brush

  China

  Long, long ago in faraway China, there lived a poor boy named Liang. Both of his parents had died, and he had to take care of himself. To make his living, Liang sold firewood, but he carried in his heart a dream of becoming a great painter. This was all he could think about. Each night he would dream of painting mountains, birds, people, and animals. But Liang was so poor, he couldn’t even afford to buy a brush to paint with.

  One day, as he was walking along a street in his village, Liang passed a school where a teacher was showing his students how to paint. Liang was fascinated. He stood on tiptoe and peered into a window for as long as he could, just watching how the teacher applied paint to his paper scroll, stroke by stroke. To get a better look, Liang slipped quietly into the school.

  When the teacher finished, Liang walked up to him and bowed very low. “Please, sir,” he said as politely as he could, “I also want to learn how to paint. Would you please lend me a brush?”

  The teacher’s face hardened, and he looked as if he were smelling rotten eggs. “Who let this beggar in here?” he said, raising his voice. “Throw him out!”

  The students in the painting class chased Liang out of the school, teasing and laughing at him. But Liang didn’t give up on his dream. He decided to practice every day, even if he couldn’t afford a brush.

  When he went up into the mountains to gather firewood, he would use a twig to draw birds and animals in the dirt. When he went to the river to fish, he would draw in the sand.

  He practiced every chance he had and soon became very good. His drawings looked so real that people who saw them expected them to come to life. But Liang still didn’t have a brush.

  One night a kind-looking old man awoke Liang and handed him something. Liang instantly knew that he shouldn’t fear this stranger, and accepted his gift. “This is a magic brush,” the old man said. “But always be very careful how you use it.”

  Liang looked at it carefully. It was a fine brush made of rabbit hair and red sandalwood. Liang looked up to thank the old man, but he was already gone. Liang was so excited that he couldn’t get back to sleep.

  He got up and began to paint a bird. As soon as he was finished, the bird came to life and flew away. He painted a fish, and sure enough, as soon as it was completed, it came to life. Liang was as happy as he could be. He carefully picked up the fish and carried it down to the stream. The happy fish swam away with a splash.

  Every day after that, Liang would paint with his magic brush for the poor people in his village. He would paint hoes, plows, oil lamps, and anything else the villagers needed.

  The people of Liang’s village were all tenant farmers. That means they farmed the land of a rich landlord. They kept part of what they grew for themselves, but they had to give most of the harvest to the landlord as rent. Liang’s landlord was an especially nasty man who went out of his way to make the villagers suffer.

  Well, once word of Liang’s magic brush got out, the rich landlord heard about it too. The landlord sent out some men to grab Liang and drag him back to his house.

  But Liang refused to paint anything for the awful old landlord, no matter what he said. So the landlord threw Liang into a cold, dark, empty barn and left him there to starve.

  Late that night it began to snow. It was very, very cold outside. Still, the mean landlord left Liang in the barn with nothing to eat and no way to stay warm. Liang thought about how to escape, but he was hungry and cold, so he decided to do something about that first.

  When the landlord finally returned to the barn three days later, he found Liang happily eating hot rice cakes. Not only that, Liang had painted a stove, a steaming pot of hot stew, and a nice thick mattress with his magic brush.

  The landlord was so mad that he sent his biggest, roughest men into the barn to force Liang to paint for him. Before anyone could catch him, though, Liang painted a door on the back wall of the barn and ran outside.

  All the men ran out after him, but he quickly painted
a horse and rode away.

  Liang galloped on and on. Over mountains and hills, through valleys, and across plains he raced. At last he came to a town that was quite a distance from his village, and he decided to stay there. He began to sell pictures in the marketplace, but to keep them from becoming real, he didn’t finish them. He would paint a bird without one leg or an animal without an eye or an ear.

  One day, when Liang had just finished painting a bird without eyes, he accidentally splashed some paint where they should have been. The bird opened its eyes and flew away. All of the townspeople were amazed. Word of Liang’s magic brush spread like wildfire, travelling even farther and faster than it had in his own village. Soon even the emperor heard about it and sent out his guards to find Liang and bring him to the palace. Liang had heard many stories about how mean the emperor was to poor people, but he was not afraid.

  At the palace, when the emperor told Liang to paint a dragon, he painted a toad instead. When the emperor told him to paint a crane, he painted a chicken. Well, emperors usually get rather upset when people don’t do what they say, and this emperor was no exception. He got so angry that he had Liang thrown into jail, and he took away his magic brush.

  Eager to increase his huge fortune, the emperor then tried to use the magic brush himself to paint some gold coins, but the coins turned into rocks. When he tried to paint gold bars, they turned into snakes.

  The emperor realized that only Liang could use the brush properly, so he let the boy out of jail and gave him a great deal of money. He also gave Liang presents and tried to win his friendship. Liang pretended to go along with this, but no matter what the emperor said or how many presents he gave Liang, the boy somehow remembered the kind of person the emperor really was in his heart.

  The emperor, determined to get Liang to paint for him, decided to take him out of the palace one day. “What a great day to spend by the seaside!” he said. “The fresh air will be good for everyone. We shall have so much fun.” And off they went—the emperor, the courtiers, and Liang.

  On the way, the emperor told Liang how he had always wished to sail to other lands across the ocean.

  When they arrived by the seaside, the emperor asked Liang in the sweetest and most polite way possible, “Would you please be so kind and paint me a boat?” So Liang painted a magnificent dragon boat that was fit for an emperor. The emperor, of course, was delighted. His plan was working.

  “Now I can go sailing,” the emperor said, his eyes shining, “but I will need to bring along some gifts for the people I visit across the ocean.” He flashed Liang his sweetest smile. “Please paint me some cloth, food, and provisions for the journey. Oh, and some chests filled with gold coins would be nice too.”

  So Liang painted bales of fine silk cloth, jars and urns of food and provisions, and chests filled with gold coins.

  When the greedy emperor saw the gold, he got quite excited.

  “More!” he said, trying very hard to keep his composure. “Paint more gold!” So Liang painted ten more chests of gold coins.

  But still it was not enough, and soon the emperor was shouting, “An emperor like me will need more than this to travel. I need gold bars—lots of gold bars!” So Liang continued to paint.

  “More! More! More gold!” screamed the emperor, turning red, as he was boarding the boat with his courtiers. “Fill the boat up with gold!”

  Liang kept painting more and more gold. Soon the dragon boat was overloaded with gold coins and gold bars.

  “Now paint me a good strong wind!” the emperor ordered.

  Liang obediently painted the wind, and the heavily laden boat set sail quickly. Not long afterwards, however, it started to sink. The boat was much too heavy to be seaworthy and it sank to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.

  The story of Liang and his magic brush spread throughout the country, but no one knew what happened to little Liang. Some said he went back to his village and lived with his friends. Others claimed that he spent his life wandering the earth, painting for poor people wherever he went.

  A Tale of Sticks and Turnips

  KOREA

  Cho was a hardworking farmer with a simple life and big dreams. Whenever he wasn’t working in his little pear orchard, he studied hard and read as many books as he could find. Because of this, he was very smart and everyone in his village looked up to him. None of the other farmers even knew how to read or write.

  One day, Cho and his best friend, Shin, were drinking tea and watching the sun set while discussing how to better grow their special pears. “We should take turns bringing our village’s crops to the city to sell, so no one man has to leave his farm many times during the growing season,” Cho said thoughtfully.

  “I agree,” Shin replied. “And you’re just the person to talk to the villagers about it. Everyone will listen to you—you’re practically our mayor. In fact,” he continued, “you should be made the official mayor of this village. No one else could ever look after the people who live here as well as you do.”

  “You know very well that nobody can be mayor, or even get a job in a government office, without passing the royal exam, which is very difficult. And anyway, no matter how many times I write to the governor to apply for the exam, I still hear nothing back.” Cho sighed. “It is because I am only a simple farmer.”

  Shin seemed to be thinking. “Well,” he said after a moment, “maybe you should go to the governor’s office in the city and speak with him in person.”

  Cho realized that doing this might be his only chance to sit for the royal exam. If he wanted to be able to help the people of his village, he would have to try again and again until he succeeded.

  “You’re right, Shin,” Cho finally said. “Tomorrow I will travel to the city, and I will not leave until I see the governor himself.”

  Cho started his trip long before sunrise the next day, bringing with him only some food and water for the journey and a small basket of pears from his most prized tree. When visiting others, the people of Cho’s village always brought a gift. Cho planned give these pears, the result of all his hard work, to the governor.

  After traveling eight long hours by foot, Cho finally arrived at the big city gates. As he walked through the crowded marketplace, carefully guarding his small basket of pears, his excitement almost made him forget how tired he felt. When he reached the governor’s office, two men were guarding the door. “Please,” Cho said, not even sure if the men were listening. “I have no appointment, but I wish to see the governor.”

  “The governor is a very busy man, so you can keep wishing,” replied one of the guards. “Maybe you’ll see him next spring, if you’re lucky.” The guard laughed and turned away.

  But Cho would not give up so easily. He decided to wait, hoping to meet the governor as he left for the day.

  Many hours later, a man in royal garb was escorted past the guards. Cho quickly kneeled in the path of these new men, saying in a loud voice, “Mister Governor, please spare me a few minutes of your time! I am farmer Cho, and I have come to ask permission to sit for the royal exam. I’ve been studying for many years. Please give me a chance.” Seeing that the governor was ready to step around him, Cho quickly continued, “I’ve brought a small gift of fruit from my village.” He handed the basket to one of the guards.

  The governor eyed the delicious-looking pears. “Go home,” he told Cho. “You will hear from me when you can come sit for the exam.”

  So Cho went home, where he waited patiently until a year had passed. Still he heard nothing from the governor. He was disappointed, but with encouragement from Shin and his wife, Cho decided to return to the city to see the governor.

  But halfway through Cho’s journey, the sky suddenly darkened and the wind picked up. Seconds later, rain started to come down hard. Cho realized he needed shelter from this storm. Up ahead, a strange hut appeared out of nowhere, and he struggled towards it. The hut’s door flew open just as Cho raised his hand to knock on it, startli
ng him. Inside, the hut was more comfortable than Cho had expected. The friendly young couple who lived there offered him plenty to eat and drink.

  Cho was drifting off to sleep at the dinner table when he felt a tapping sensation all over his body. It was strange, almost as if someone were lightly beating sticks against his skin. But Cho was far too sleepy to do anything about it.

  He woke up to a terrible headache and the sound of murmuring voices. One of the voices was saying, “It’s time to take the ox to the market.” Cho opened his eyes slowly. As he did, he noticed something very different about himself. Right before his eyes, which were now widening in horror, was an animal’s gray snout. Not only that, it was attached to his face, where his nose was supposed to be!

  Confused and very afraid, Cho struggled to stand up. As he did, he clumsily fell to the floor with a loud thud. Cho felt a scream rising in his throat, but no sound came out. His hands and feet had turned into hard clattering hooves, and for some reason the only sounds he could make were throaty grunts.

  “Whoa!” said the woman he’d had dinner with the night before. “Hold steady.” Hold steady? Why is she talking to me this way? wondered Cho. Then it suddenly dawned on him. Snout, hooves, grunting sounds … why, Cho had somehow turned into an ox!

  Cho was too stunned to move. He couldn’t even fight back when the woman put a ring through his nose and tied him to the end of a rope.

  The man took the rope from his wife and began to lead Cho to the market. On the way, the man carefully tied Cho to a stake near an inn and went inside.