The “Earth and Heaven” in Richly Depicted Folk Tales“

To be hon­est, I whole­heart­ed­ly agree with the first state­ment, but as some­one who isn’t from Hunan, I’ve nev­er tru­ly grasped the mean­ing of the sec­ond. Is Mr. Huang try­ing to say that Hunan is “blessed” because it has pro­duced such an out­stand­ing local artist, or because this paint­ing style and the way it presents folk tales so apt­ly show­case the local cul­ture and cus­toms? Or per­haps both?

Ini­tial­ly, this book was part of the “Illus­trat­ed Col­lec­tion of Chi­nese Eth­nic Fes­ti­vals and Cus­toms Sto­ries” series, telling the sto­ry of the Tujia peo­ple’s June 6th Fes­ti­val cus­toms. The series pref­ace states: “The col­lec­tion selects fes­ti­vals from var­i­ous eth­nic groups as its sub­ject mat­ter, delib­er­ate­ly depict­ing the ori­gins, sto­ries, cus­toms, and tra­di­tions of each fes­ti­val…” In oth­er words, the ini­tial inten­tion was pri­mar­i­ly to help read­ers under­stand the diver­si­ty and vibrant folk cus­toms of dif­fer­ent eth­nic groups. How­ev­er, upon deep­er read­ing, one can feel a pro­found depth far exceed­ing that.

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First, what hits you is a pure folk tale with a strong local fla­vor and super­nat­ur­al pow­er. Three years of preg­nan­cy (in the orig­i­nal ver­sion), three gold­en drag­ons, three bam­boo poles, three divine arrows, three years and six months, and three days short… In folk tales all over the world, we can feel the pow­er of “three”; then, a red ball in the sky, a room full of gold­en light, a new­born baby grow­ing in the wind, jump­ing into the water and quick­ly grow­ing into adult­hood… This inevitably reminds one of the sto­ry of “Nezha Con­quers the Drag­on King”.

​Then, the sto­ry intro­duces intense con­flict and oppo­si­tion. The omen of the gold­en drag­on offends the impe­r­i­al court, spark­ing a feud over the mur­der of one’s par­ents. This per­son­al hatred then spreads to the oppressed vil­lagers, grad­u­al­ly esca­lat­ing into divine­ly inspired assas­si­na­tions, upris­ings, and great bat­tles, cul­mi­nat­ing in the hero’s sac­ri­fice, a dra­mat­ic shift in polit­i­cal land­scape, and the forced sub­mis­sion of the most pow­er­ful. Although the sto­ry seems to ulti­mate­ly set­tle on the folk cus­tom of “dry­ing the drag­on robe on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month,” what leaves a deep­er impres­sion is the trag­ic sto­ry of the Tujia eth­nic hero, Qin Hou. If you’ve seen the film *Seed­iq Bale*, you might share a sim­i­lar pow­er­ful feel­ing.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Cai Gao’s use of folk cus­toms and child­like charm in her nar­ra­tive soft­ens the sto­ry’s inher­ent tragedy. When she first paint­ed this fes­ti­val sto­ry, she felt “the col­ors were beau­ti­ful, the paint­ing was live­ly, and the fes­ti­val rep­re­sent­ed an affir­ma­tion of life.” The ini­tial ver­sion opened with a vibrant, joy­ous drag­on dance scene. The scenes depict­ing every­day life and dri­ving the sto­ry for­ward pri­mar­i­ly employ the flat per­spec­tive of folk paint­ing, resem­bling both chil­dren’s draw­ings and murals. The col­ors and fig­ures in the paint­ings do indeed evoke Tujia bro­cade and murals—vibrant col­ors and rich pat­terns. The strong con­trast of red, yel­low, blue, and green cre­ates a pas­sion­ate and unre­strained feel­ing; the fig­ures and pat­terns in the paint­ings car­ry a strong sym­bol­ic qual­i­ty, con­vey­ing a close con­nec­tion to nature and express­ing a long­ing for a sim­ple life and beau­ti­ful things.

The most trag­ic part of the first half of the sto­ry is per­haps the mur­der of Qin Hou’s par­ents. Yet, we see them buried peace­ful­ly in the pond; the jade-green water reflects their unyield­ing and noble spir­it. The fish, peb­bles, and flow­ers in the pond are arranged in neat pat­terns, their flo­ral designs sur­round­ing the sleep­ing cou­ple, as if heav­en and earth have spe­cial­ly arranged a grand bur­ial for them. This also explains why the sol­diers who com­mit­ted the mur­der fled out of fear and lied to the emper­or, claim­ing they had com­plet­ed their mis­sion of killing Qin Hou. I think the artist is per­haps evok­ing a sense of awe in the read­er in her unique way.

Look­ing back at Cai Gao’s work from 36 years ago, one is quite amazed by her bold explo­ration in inte­grat­ing folk art with pic­ture book nar­ra­tive. For exam­ple, she repeat­ed­ly used the nar­ra­tive tech­nique of “parachron­ic iso­mor­phism” through­out the book, con­cen­trat­ing events or states that occurred at dif­fer­ent times into the same pic­ture. This is com­mon in Chi­nese folk and tra­di­tion­al paint­ing, and it seems very nat­ur­al in “The Sixth Day of the Sixth Month for Dry­ing Drag­on Robes.” Lit­tle Qin Hou runs out of the house naked, fol­lowed by his cheer­ful father. On the right side of the pic­ture is a close-up of Qin Hou hap­pi­ly bathing in the moun­tain spring. Mean­while, the doll hid­ing in the cave jumps into the water­fall formed by his bib and emerges as a “tall and majes­tic young man.” This series of events is also pre­sent­ed nat­u­ral­ly in the same pic­ture.

In terms of nar­ra­tive and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, Cai Gao both absorbed and devel­oped tra­di­tion­al paint­ing tech­niques. Regard­ing the den­si­ty and arrange­ment of ele­ments in the com­po­si­tion, she could bring many ele­ments togeth­er dense­ly while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly allow­ing oth­ers to unfold sparse­ly, pure­ly for the sake of sto­ry­telling. For exam­ple, in the scene of A Hou lead­ing the Tu fam­i­ly youth in a fierce bat­tle against the gov­ern­ment troops, the left side of the dou­ble-page spread depicts a dense bat­tle scene, while the right side shows a large carp thrown down from the moun­tain. Below the moun­tain are scat­tered tents and tiny, stunned gov­ern­ment sol­diers, high­light­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of the large carp. As for the con­trast in size between ele­ments, the most strik­ing is prob­a­bly the scene of Tan Hou car­ry­ing a water buf­fa­lo in one hand and a huge rock in the oth­er. The hero, with his super­hu­man strength, is so large that he almost over­flows the frame, mak­ing the water buf­fa­lo look like a kit­ten in his hands, and the gov­ern­ment offi­cials appear piti­ful­ly small. Chil­dren would not only ful­ly under­stand such illus­tra­tions but would also enjoy them immense­ly.

How­ev­er, although I read this sto­ry many years ago, I nev­er delved into the sto­ry behind it. This time, read­ing this new edi­tion with its sig­nif­i­cant changes to both the text and the image lay­out, I could­n’t resist get­ting to the bot­tom of it. And what I found quite sur­pris­ing was…The hero Qin Hou in this folk tale is actu­al­ly a real per­son in Chi­nese his­to­ry!He was orig­i­nal­ly a Tujia chief­tain dur­ing the late Yuan and ear­ly Ming dynas­ties. There are dif­fer­ing accounts of his birth year, such as 1309 or 1311, but his death date is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed as June 6th of the lunar cal­en­dar in 1372 (the fifth year of the Hong­wu reign). His deeds are record­ed in local chron­i­cles and genealo­gies, and are also men­tioned in the *His­to­ry of Ming*, and even in *The Book of the Advan­tages and Dis­ad­van­tages of the Coun­ties and States Under Heav­en*, a polit­i­cal geog­ra­phy trea­tise by the late Ming and ear­ly Qing schol­ar Gu Yan­wu.

Leav­ing aside the exag­ger­at­ed and mythol­o­gized aspects of lat­er leg­ends, focus­ing on a rel­a­tive­ly objec­tive nar­ra­tive, Qin Hou, whose orig­i­nal name was “Wen Jin,” was born into a Tujia peas­ant fam­i­ly in Mao­gang (present-day Cili Coun­ty, Zhangji­a­jie, Hunan Province) at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. He lat­er led a Tujia upris­ing against the Yuan Dynasty, chang­ing his name to “Hou” (an alter­nate form of “Hou”), mean­ing “Earth God,” a term of rev­er­ence for the land. Inter­est­ing­ly, Qin Hou’s Tujia rebel army joined forces with the rebel armies of Chen You­liang and Zhu Yuanzhang, joint­ly over­throw­ing the tyran­ni­cal Yuan Dynasty. Qin Hou also sub­mit­ted to Zhu Yuanzhang and became the “Cili Paci­fi­ca­tion Com­mis­sion­er.” How­ev­er, after Zhu Yuanzhang estab­lished the Ming Dynasty, the court’s oppres­sive tax­a­tion of the Tujia peo­ple seemed to inten­si­fy. Thus, Qin Hou led the Tujia peo­ple in anoth­er upris­ing, which even­tu­al­ly esca­lat­ed into a pro­tract­ed, life-or-death local war last­ing sev­er­al years.

Gu Yan­wu sum­ma­rized in his book: “Dur­ing the Hong­wu reign, the moun­tain chief­tain Qin Hou con­spired with var­i­ous vil­lages to rebel…”—From this Han schol­ar’s per­spec­tive, Qin Hou could be con­sid­ered a “moun­tain ban­dit” of a minor­i­ty eth­nic group, and the resis­tance he led was of a rebel­lious nature. How­ev­er, in the eyes of the local Tujia peo­ple, Qin Hou could be con­sid­ered a “god,” and they joint­ly wove a near-myth­i­cal sto­ry, cel­e­brat­ing this hero for gen­er­a­tions to come dur­ing the fes­ti­val on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month. In real­i­ty, after Qin Hou was exe­cut­ed by slow slic­ing, the local Tujia peo­ple did not give up their resis­tance. Ulti­mate­ly, the impe­r­i­al court had to choose a degree of appease­ment and com­pro­mise, allow­ing Qin Hou’s descen­dants to per­ma­nent­ly reside in Mao­gang and exempt­ing the local vil­lagers from exor­bi­tant tax­es. The Qin clan chief­tain­ship in Mao­gang last­ed for over four hun­dred years until it was abol­ished dur­ing the Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty. From this per­spec­tive, Qin Hou’s resis­tance and sac­ri­fice were still worth­while.

So, where does the sto­ry we’re read­ing today come from? In the “Col­lec­tion of Chi­nese Folk Tales, Hunan Vol­ume, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Pre­fec­ture Sec­tion,” which I found, there is a folk tale called “King Qin­hou,” col­lect­ed in Decem­ber 1962 in Day­ong City, Hunan (now Zhangji­a­jie City). It has more than nine nar­ra­tors, and it’s esti­mat­ed that there are dif­fer­ent ver­sions in var­i­ous parts of Day­ong. After being com­piled and edit­ed by col­lec­tors Chen Ziwen and Jin Kejian, it reads like a short hero­ic leg­end. Almost all the sto­ry ele­ments we see in pic­ture books can be found in this piece. It’s esti­mat­ed that the 1989 pic­ture book edi­tion was an adap­ta­tion of this type of sto­ry, great­ly reduc­ing the ver­bose details of the oral nar­ra­tion and also mak­ing nec­es­sary adjust­ments for chil­dren.

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As far as I know, at least three chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture authors have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the relay adap­ta­tion of this sto­ry. The ini­tial adap­ta­tion was by Hunan writer Wu Chaozhu, fol­lowed by fur­ther adap­ta­tions by Wang Yimei and Xiang Hua, each in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. It would be very inter­est­ing to com­pare and study mul­ti­ple ver­sions. How­ev­er, I want to focus on the new ver­sion adapt­ed by Cai Gao him­self, which should be the ver­sion with the clos­est inte­gra­tion of text and illus­tra­tions.

I noticed that the new ver­sion places the sec­tion on fes­ti­val cus­toms after the main text, as a sup­ple­men­tary page, so that omit­ting it does­n’t affect the over­all sto­ry. I think this means the sto­ry returns to the focus on “Hero Qin Hou,” although not “King Qin Hou.” Inter­est­ing­ly, Qin Hou was born to his moth­er after a ten-month preg­nan­cy (not three years), adding a touch of real­ism to the sto­ry. Qin Hou’s old­er sis­ter, A Xiu, becomes involved in the sto­ry ear­li­er. Fur­ther­more, the text is more con­cise, remov­ing more details and leav­ing more space for visu­al imagery; the dia­logue has also been sim­pli­fied, remov­ing traces of Hunan dialect from the orig­i­nal sto­ry.

The new edi­tion has also made many adjust­ments to the lay­out, pac­ing, image col­or scheme, and details. For exam­ple, the first two dou­ble-page spreads, which orig­i­nal­ly focused the images on a sin­gle page, are now arranged in a 50/50 split, mak­ing the open­ing nar­ra­tive more relaxed and engag­ing. In the lat­er pages where the par­ents appear in a dream and Ah Hou retrieves the mag­ic arrow and finds the trea­sure bow, the pac­ing has been slowed down, and the order of the images has been sub­tly adjust­ed, mak­ing the rela­tion­ship between text and images clear­er and more log­i­cal. I also noticed that in the old ver­sion, in the scene where Ah Hou strug­gles to pull up the bam­boo, he had actu­al­ly pulled out the root of a large bam­boo stalk, but this con­flict­ed with the nar­ra­tive’s descrip­tion of it “not mov­ing an inch.” In the new ver­sion, the bam­boo roots are no longer vis­i­ble in the images!

The most com­mend­able revi­sion is the dra­mat­ic and icon­ic scene where the old­er sis­ter, Ah Xiu, throws the chick­en up a tree and chas­es the dog onto the roof. Orig­i­nal­ly, Ah Hou’s three mag­ic arrows flew from right to left, but on the next page, the arrows flew from left to right to the palace. Now, Ah Hou’s arrows fly in the oppo­site direc­tion, mak­ing it seem as if the three arrows flew con­tin­u­ous­ly to the cap­i­tal! This bet­ter suits the page-turn­ing effect required for a pic­ture book.

In con­clu­sion, the new edi­tion of “The Sixth Day of the Sixth Lunar Month for Dry­ing Drag­on Robes” is more aligned with the read­ing needs of con­tem­po­rary pic­ture books in terms of text and illus­tra­tions, offer­ing greater flex­i­bil­i­ty for both par­ent-child and group read­ing. So, let’s return to the basics: what kind of sto­ry does this folk tale, adapt­ed and passed down through so many gen­er­a­tions in a pic­ture book, actu­al­ly tell? What do the three gold­en drag­ons on Ahou’s body rep­re­sent? Why do peo­ple com­mem­o­rate him with a fes­ti­val?

I believe the answer should be open-end­ed for read­ers, allow­ing for dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions. How­ev­er, for the artist con­stant­ly retelling this sto­ry, there are still some note­wor­thy clues hid­den with­in the imagery. As men­tioned ear­li­er, Qin Hou’s name is derived from “Houtu,” the cor­re­spond­ing term being “Huangt­ian” (Emper­or’s Heav­en), the for­mer refer­ring to earth and the lat­ter to heav­en. In this book, the emper­or’s first appear­ance is always accom­pa­nied by sym­bols of heaven—stars and dragons—while Qin Hou, in con­trast, is always depict­ed with soil, fields, rocks, and streams. The emper­or want­ed to elim­i­nate Qin Hou because he feared that the gold­en drag­on would usurp his posi­tion as “the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of heav­en,” but was­n’t the Hong­wu Emper­or of the real world also of hum­ble ori­gins? There­fore, this rela­tion­ship between earth and heav­en is actu­al­ly rel­a­tive and flu­id. The emper­or, who cap­tured Qin Hou through cun­ning and force, could exe­cute him, but he also had to bow before the gold­en drag­on that Qin Hou trans­formed into after his death. At that moment, earth and heav­en switched places!

The new­ly added end­pa­pers in the new edi­tion are quite intrigu­ing: the entire page is dom­i­nat­ed by green, inter­spersed with earthy brown, depict­ing field ridges, grassy slopes, and mud­dy ground, with ris­ing mois­ture and brim­ming with life; how­ev­er, the area above, per­haps rep­re­sent­ing the sky, is nar­row and lead­en gray, giv­ing a some­what oppres­sive feel­ing. Per­haps this is a new clue left by the artist for the read­er.

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on June 21, 2025 in Bei­jing

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