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Woodcutter and the Silver Cave

There was once a woodcutter named Chang, he went to the South Mountain every day to cut wood, and burn charcoal. His father was a charcoal seller, he started to cut wood and burn charcoal with his father when he was a boy, now his hair had turn to grey, his face stained with dust and ashes, his ten fingers are black. He transport charcoal in an ox-drawn cart and sold in the market for the price of a silver coin, which was just enough to clothe his limbs and put food in his mouth. Although he worked very hard, he was still very poor.

One morning, he took a break as usual; he sat down under a huge pine tree beside a spring, ate his stale bread, drank water from the spring, and sighed: “Oh, the Spirit of the South Mountain, why I work so hard, I am still very poor. Is it my fate? ” Just then he noticed a hole in the precipice behind the pine tree, a beautiful golden bird standing at the edge of the entrance, look left and right cautiously, then flew away.

“That was a strange bird I have ever seen,” he said to himself, “I wonder if I could find some eggs in its nest.”

He climbed up the precipice, and put his hands in the hole. There were no eggs, but he could felt something that seemed like metal. He grabbed it out, and looked, it was a silver coin! He put his hand inside the hole again, hoped to find another one, but nothing more.

The next day, he went there cut wood as usual, and tried his luck again at the morning break. To his surprise, he found another silver coin! And the same thing happened the day after that.

“I can only earn a silver coin everyday at my best.” The woodcutter thought, now I needn’t to cut wood anymore.

So he went to the mountain every day, and got his silver coin, and felt very happy. But soon he was not satisfied by only one coin a day. “I wish I could get more silver coins a day instead of one, I would blow up the hole, and find more treasure at one, and need not come here every day, “ he thought, “and then I could buy a house, and become rich.”

So the next day he brought a chisel, a hammer, and some dynamite. He made a bigger hold in the precipice, and stuffed the hole with dynamite, light it, and “bang!” He blew down the precipice. What would you expect the ending? Did he find nothing, not even one silver coin, just like the man who owned the golden goose in Aesop’s tale? No! The wood cutter found a huge silver mine!

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