Favorite Stories from China

Sample chapters

Song of Everlasting Regret
(from Section 3 -- Historical Anecdotes)

During those somber years when the Roman Empire was crumbling down and Europe was stumbling towards the Dark Ages, China was ruled by the emperors of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). This was a golden era in China. The land of the Tang, rich and open-minded, attracted from all over the world merchants whose caravans carved out a “Silk Road” across deserts and mountains. Among the numerous Tang artists and poets who produced some of China’s finest paintings and poetry, it was Bai Ju-Yi who best described the love story between Yang Yu-Huan and the Bright Emperor (Tang Ming Huang) in the famous poem “Song of Everlasting Regret”.

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The Sevens' Eve
(from Section 1 -- Legends)

If you look up into the heavens on a clear and moonless summer night, you can see a faintly glowing fluffy and mottled silvery ribbon stretching in a huge arc across the horizon, from south to north. This is what is known today as the Milky Way. On one side of the Milky Way (the right side, if you live in the northern hemisphere), almost overhead, a bluish-white star shines brilliantly, the second-brightest star in the northern hemisphere, Vega of the constellation Lyra, the lyre. The Chinese call her the Weaver Maiden. She sits by her loom, forever weaving, alone. On the opposite side of the Milky Way, another bright star, though so much fainter (only 12th brightest of the night sky), waits forever: Altair of the constellation Aquila. The Chinese call it: The Cowherd. The Weaver Maiden and the Cowherd are eternally apart… except once a year, on the seventh evening of the seventh moon. And when they meet, they remember.

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