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For nine years a mountain village sent a girl of twelve into the serpent cave on the first day of the eighth month. The tenth girl walked in on her own feet, carrying a sword and leading a dog.

Chiyou could summon the wind and the rain. The Yellow Emperor lost nine battles in a row. What he brought in to finish the war won him the world and cost two beings from heaven their way home, and the ground where they fought did not see rain for a long time.

Heaven cut off his head and buried it under a mountain. Then he used his nipples for eyes and his navel for a mouth, and he raised his shield and his axe and went on dancing. The one rebel the gods could not make stop moving.

The youngest daughter of the Flame Emperor waded into the East Sea and did not come back. She returned as a bird with a white beak and red feet, and she has been carrying one twig at a time out over the water ever since. Nobody sentenced her to it. Nobody has told her to stop.

A general with no land and no plan walked three times to a thatched hut in the hills, in the snow, to ask a young farmer for help. The third time, the farmer was asleep, and the general waited. This is the Chinese idiom 三顾茅庐, from the Records of the Three Kingdoms.

A poor scholar fell asleep at a roadside inn, resting his head on a blue-green porcelain pillow. In one nap he rose to prime minister, was thrown in prison, and died at eighty. When he woke, the pot of millet on the stove was not yet cooked. This is the Chinese idiom 黄粱一梦.

A master archer told the King of Wei he could bring down a bird without an arrow. He pulled the string, and a lone wild goose dropped out of the sky. It was not the shot that felled it, but an old wound, and the fear it had never put down. This is the Chinese idiom 惊弓之鸟.

A small state was about to be crushed by a bigger one. Then a farmer climbed onto the duke’s chariot and told him not to beat the war drum. He waited for the enemy to drum three times, and only then struck. This is the Chinese idiom 一鼓作气, from the Zuo Commentary.

A king lost his country, then spent three years feeding horses for the man who beat him. When he finally went home, he slept on a pile of dry brushwood and tasted bitter gall every day, so he would never forget. This is the Chinese idiom 卧薪尝胆, from the Records of the Grand Historian.

A gentle Chinese bedtime story about a small bear and a wobbly bamboo bridge. Halfway across he stops, afraid, and calls for his mother. A little carp tells him not to look down, and he takes one step, then one more. Short sentences, a soft ending, and the old children’s song about the bear on the bridge.