Chinese Æsop:

There was a man of Sung, who was grieved that his growing corn was not longer, and so he pulled it up. Having done this, he returned home, looking very stupid, and said to his people, "I am tired to-day. I have been helping the corn to grow long." His son ran to look at it, and found the corn all withered.  

The king Hsüan of Ch'î one day was sitting aloft in the hall, when a man appeared, leading an ox past the lower part of it. The king saw him, and asked, Where is the ox going? The man replied, We are going to consecrate a bell with its blood. The king said, Let it go. I cannot bear its frightened appearance, as if it were an innocent person going to the place of death. The man answered, Shall we then omit the consecration of the bell? The king said, How can that be omitted? Change it for a sheep."

In the second year of King P'ing (527 B.C.), Fei Wu-chi was sent to go to Ch'in to accept a bride for Chien, the Heir. The girl was becoming. When she had set out for Ch'u, but before she had arrived, Wu-chi returned and advised King P'ing, saying, "The girl from Ch'in is becoming. Your Majesty can marry her yourself, and seek another bride for the Heir." King P'ing listened to him and in the end married the girl from Ch'in himself, and married another woman to the Heir. At this time Wu She was the Grand Mentor of the Heir, Wu-chi was the Lesser Mentor. Wu-chi was not favored by the heir, and he often spoke ill of Ch'ien, the Heir. Chien at this time was fifteen years old. His mother was a woman from Ts'ai and was not favoured by the king. The King gradually became more and more estranged from Chien. In the sixth year (523 B.C.), Chien, the heir, was sent to reside at Cheng-fu to guard the border. Wu-chi again day and night slandered Ch...

Chang K'ien (张骞) was a native of Han-chung in the south of Shen-si province ; during the period of K'ien-yuan [140-134 BCE] he was a lang, which was a titular officer of the imperial household; a yeoman. At that time the Son of Heaven made inquiries among those Hsiung-nu who had surrendered as prisoners and they all reported that the Hsiung-nu had overcome the king of the Yue-chi and made a drinking-vessel out of his skull. The Yue-chi had decamped and were hiding somewhere, all the time scheming how to take revenge on the Hsiung-nu, but had no ally to join them in striking a blow. The Chinese, wishing to declare war on and wipe out the Hsiung nu, upon hearing this report, desired to communicate with the Yue-chi; but, the road having to pass through the territory of the Hsiung-nu, the Emperor sought out men whom he could send. Chang K'ien, being a lang, responded to the call and enlisted in a mission to the Yue-chi; he took with him one Kan Fu, a Tartar, formerly a slave ...

LIFE OF LI PO Li Po, styled T'ai-po, was descended in the ninth generation from the Emperor Hsing-shēng. One of his ancestors was charged with a crime at the end of the Sui dynasty, and took refuge in Turkestan. At the beginning of the period Shēn-lung the family returned and settled in Pa-hsi in Szechwan. At his birth Po's mother dreamt of the planet Venus, and that was why he was called Po. At the beginning of the T'ien-pao period he went to Ch'ang-an. Here he visited Ho Chih-chang. When Chih-chang read some of his work, he sighed and said : " You are an exiled fairy." He told the Emperor, who sent for Po and gave him audience in the Golden Bells Hall. The poet submitted an essay dealing with current events. The Emperor bestowed food upon him and stirred the soup with his own hand. He ordered that he should be unofficially attached to the Han Lin Academy, but Po went on drinking in the market-place with his boon-companions. Once when the Emperor was si...

The Prince of Huai-nan, second century B.C., who after years of patient experiment, have finally discovered the elixir of life. Immediately on tasting the drug, his body became imponderable, and he began to rise heavenward. Startled by this new sensation, he dropped the cup out of which he had been drinking, into the courtyard ; whereupon his dogs and poultry finished up the dregs, and were soon sailing up to heaven after him.

There was once a young man who had fallen under the influence of a beautiful young girl, when he met a Taoist priest in the street, who started on seeing him, and said that his face showed signs that he had been bewitched. Hurrying home, the young man found his door locked; and on creeping softly up to the window and looking in, he saw a hideous fox devil, with a green face and jagged teeth like a saw, spreading a human skin on the bed, and painting it with a paint-brush. The devil then threw aside the brush, and giving the skin a shake-out, just as you would a coat, cast it over its shoulders, when lo! there stood the girl. The young man was so frighted that he ran away as fast as he could to the priest. The priest then engaged in terrible conflict with the fox devil. Finally she became a dense column of smoke curling up from the ground, and then the priest took from his vest an uncorked gourd, and threw it right into the midst of the smoke. A sucking noise was heard, and the whole ...