The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales

by Jack D. Zipes (Foreword), Juwen Zhang (Editor)

A delightful collection of modern Chinese tales

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales brings together forty-two magical Chinese tales, most appearing for the first time in English. These stories have been carefully selected from more than a thousand originally published in the early twentieth century under the pseudonyms Lin Lan and Lady Lin Lan--previously unknown in the West, and now acclaimed as the Brothers Grimm of China.

The birth of the tales began in 1924, when one author, Li Xiaofeng, published a set of literary stories under the Lin Lan pen name, an alias that would eventually be shared by an editorial team. Together, this group gathered fairy tales (tonghua) from rural regions across China. Combining traditional oral Chinese narratives with elements from the West, the selections in this collection represent different themes and genres--from folk legends to comic tales. Characters fall for fairies, experience predestined love, and have love/hate relationships with siblings. Garden snails and snakes transform into cooking girls, and dragon daughters construct houses. An introduction offers historical and social context for understanding the role that the Lin Lan stories played in modern China. Appendixes include information on tale types and biographies of the writers and contributors.

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales is a captivating testament to the power of storytelling.

Genres: China, Fantasy, Fairy Tales

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 8, 2022

About the author

Jack David Zipes is a retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. He has published and lectured extensively on the subject of fairy tales, their linguistic roots, and argued that they have a "socialization function". According to Zipes, fairy tales "serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society." His arguments are avowedly based on the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Zipes enjoys using droll titles for his works like Don't Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood.

He completed a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University. Zipes taught at various institutions before heading German language studies at the University of Minnesota. He has retranslation of the complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are unusual and very abrupt. Perhaps that's part of the translation or really how they're told, but it was weird to slam into an "And I don't know what happened next. The End." There were a lot of themes for these stories though and at times they felt like repeats with just slight variations. Many times there were siblings who had different luck. The lucky sibling would be kind and generous while the other siblings would be greedy and deceitful, so the "good" sibling would get the wealth, good house, and a pretty wife, while the "bad" sibling would get dog poop in their lap... or something like that, there were a lot of instances where divine gifts turned into poop for the greedy person. So while it felt like a whirlwind to read and keep up with the strange circumstances of these stories, they were entertaining and provided some interesting messaging.

[Calvin Cheung · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall enjoyable but many of these tales were ever so slight variants of the same story. Author mentioned this collection was but a fraction of the Lin Lan fairy tales ever published, so why not curate a bit more diversely?

Translation was okay. Plot twists make little sense and stories end abruptly, though I guess one can't demand too much from fairy tales. This would have served well as one big children's book with lots of pictures.

Best part was the introduction which gave some sociohistorical context. I was surprised to find out that one of the contributors was Zhou Zuoren, younger brother of Lu Xun

[Kathy Shimpock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of the Lin Lan tales, which include elements from traditional European fairy tales mixed with Chinese culture. These literary tales were written from 1920-1940 and were inspired by traditional Chinese folklore. The stories were selected from several themes including: Love with a Fairy, Predestined Love, and The Hatred and Love of Siblings. Editor and translator Juwen Zhang includes Tale Types for each story and bibliographic sources. One surprising twist in these stories is how many end with a violent act. There is no "happily ever after" assured in the Lin Lan Fairy Tales.

[Alisa Ottaway · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was an okay book. I mostly just read it because we had to read a fairy tale book, and it had to be in recent times. It was about 40 tales and they were selected from the "Lin Lan" series. It took place in the 1920-1930 time period. It described how"Lin Lan" was created in 1924 when a group of three literary stories on Xu Wenchang were published.

[Peter Tillman]

Review excerpt here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/14/... [paywalled]