Once upon a time, on an is land in the East China Sea, there lived a fish ing fam ily named Lin. They were popu lar among their fel low vil lag ers be cause they were al ways will ing to help any one in need. Although the Lin cou ple had six chil dren, only one was a son. They were wor ried that if some -thing should hap pen to the only male heir, the fam ily line would break. Keep ing a fam ily line un bro -ken was a se ri ous mat ter to the Chi nese. They prayed to Guanyin, God dess of Mercy, for an other boy. Read the rest of this entry »

Miao Shan was in tel li gent and ea ger to learn even when she was a small child. As she grew into a young lady, her par ents tried to marry her off because, accord ing to the so cial norms of the time, keep ing an un mar ried grown-up daugh ter would be a dis grace to the fam ily. Miao Shan, how ever, re -fused re peat edly. At their wits’ end, her par ents locked her up in a chamber in the back yard garden. There, tak ing ad van tage of her quiet, se ques tered en vi ron ment, Miao Shan med i tated and be came a de vout Bud dhist be liever, as she had been in her pre vi ous ex is tence as Shi Shan. No mat ter how King Miao Zhuang and Queen Boya rea soned with her, Miao Shan would not change her mind. She told her parents that she had de voted her self to Bud dha and would never think of worldly af fairs such as mar riage. Her sis ters, both mar ried by now, came to see her and, us ing them selves as ex am ples, tried to per suade her, but in vain. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time a pretty and in tel li gent young woman named Zhu Yingtai lived in a wealthy fam ily. With each passing day, her de sire to go to school intensified. How ever, in her day schools were open only to male stu dents. Parents would not al low their daugh ters to min gle with the oppo site sex un der any circumstances. Like the daugh ters of other fam ilies of means, Zhu Yingtai could only re ceive homeschooling. “It is not only the knowl edge found in the books that in ter ests me,” Read the rest of this entry »

Tang Seng (The Monk of Tang dy nasty) and his three dis ciples were on their way to the Bud -dhist holy land in the West to seek the true Bud dhist scrip tures. They had just said good bye to a hot sum mer and were about to en joy a cool fall when suddenly they felt wave after wave of hot air blow -ing in their faces as they ap proached a vil lage. When asked about the strange heat wave, a vil lager told them that the hot air came from what they called the Moun tain of Flames, to their west. It cov -ered an area of 800 square miles. Read the rest of this entry »

In Mid west ern China there is a beau ti ful moun tain named Hua. On top of it there is a tem ple dedi cated to the God dess San Shengmu. Peo ple wor ship this God dess be cause they be lieve that she is al ways ready to help them. When this story took place, she was busy help ing the peo ple of the re -gion fight ing a strange ep idemic with the magic power of her baoliandeng (Magic Lo tus Lan tern). Even though the disease was un der control, she did not stop work ing because she wanted to make sure that the ep i demic would not re cur. For this rea son, she had to be away from her tem ple’s al tar from time to time. Read the rest of this entry »