[story] the village
Nov. 30th, 2008 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ib_archiveauthor: strangesingaporean (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hellsings_home)
email: sciencensoccer_addict [at] hotmail.com
The old women picked up her walking stick and slowly walked out into the yard, where chickens and children ran wild.
"Come, children, come," she beckoned to the little ones playing happily in the sand. "It's story time."
Hearing this, the children stopped and then rushed to crowd around the frail old woman, who was making her way to her long-serving rattan chairunder the shade.
"Ahh," she let out a long breath of air, tired from the walking she had to do to reclaim her throne as the neighbourhood's mythical storyteller. "Well, children, are you ready to hear a new story today?"
The youngsters nodded happily, piping replies of "Yes, story, new story!" and "We like Grandma's story!" in an excited jumble of voices.
The old woman laughed. "The story we will hear today is the story of Pan Gu, how the world came to be."
The response elicited was a widening of eyes and a collective, impressed "Oooo...!"
"Once upon a time, there was no world," she began.
The children gasped. They looked at each other, as if trying to imagine a time where their friends did not exist. Smiling with a cheekiness that belonged to her youthful soul, the woman continued:
"There was nothing, only a mad swirl of things; confusion. There was only... chaos. It was not the type of chaos where you children go around creating trouble - it was a frightening, otherworldly chaos. There were no people, no fields, no animals, no sky, no sea. Only chaos.
"Now this chaos, because it was whirling about, was something like a big, giant egg. And for eighteen thousand years, there was nothing that existed, except for this egg of utter chaos. And then finally, something appeared within this egg. Bit by bit, this thing grew slowly, just a little with every passing day. This thing grew for another eighteen thousand years. This thing grew into what we now know as Pan Gu.
"Pan Gu was very big and very hairy; his face was covered by a beard that extended from the top of his head down the sides of his face, and stretched over the whole lower half of his face, not including his lips. Even his eyebrows looked like they had a beard of their own; they were wiry, thick and bushy. Pan Gu wasn't a normal human - he was a giant, having grown for a full eighteen thousand years, unlike us, who have lived for only the tiniest fraction of the time that Pan Gu had."
"How big was he, Grandma?" interrupted one boy.
"Oh, he was big, very big. So big that just a single tear of his would drown several of our towns!" said the woman, her arms in the air to impress upon her audience the sheer size of the giant.
The children took this in with the usual sound of awed wonder while the seasoned storyteller nodded in acknowledgement.
"And then one day, Pan Gu awoke from his long sleep. He stretched and yawned because his joints were very stiff from not having moved much in those long, eighteen thousand years. His joints were much stiffer than mine, though I'm sure he didn't feel as much pain as I do."
She chuckled.
"Stretching himself to relieve his limbs of that stiffness, he found himself touching something very hard and strong. It was the walls of the egg of chaos. The egg was too small for him to live happily within it, and no wonder, for he had just enough space to stand with his arms spread out! The egg was also too messy for him. Imagine, children, being in a tiny place much smaller than our toilet, with all these things flying around at such high speeds that you can't tell what they are. It would be very uncomfortable, wouldn't it?
"But Pan Gu put up with it for a while, until he decided that he would do something about this world. So he lifted his axe in his hands, and in his mighty arms, the axe swung dangerously in the air. The blade of the axe struck heavily against the walls of the egg, but it did not just stop there. Pan Gu kept swinging it around over his head, hacking at and wrecking the tough walls. Following this, the egg's shell disintegrated and its contents spilled out; the bright and lighter pieces of the shell rose and became the sky, while the dark and heavier portions sunk down and became the earth.
"Finally, Pan Gu was free of the constraints of the giant egg.
"However, the sky and the earth were not very far apart like they are now, and Pan Gu was afraid to be enclosed within a small space again. So despite his fatigue from breaking apart the egg, he stood up tall, and with his hands, held the sky and earth apart from each other."
Just then, a young girl stepped out into the yard. The old woman looked up and the children turned to see who had come; nodding apologetically to her elder, she addressed the children: "The sky is darkening. I suspect that a storm is coming. Go back into your houses, ok, everyone?"
The children groaned unhappily.
"I want to hear Grandma's story about Pan Gu!" a little girl protested. The rest of them chorused in agreement.
"Just go inside, children, Grandma can continue her story another time. Better to be warm and dry. Right, Grandma?"
"Yes, yes, of course," the old woman laughed lightly. "Listen to Big Sister, children. I'll continue with the story tomorrow, is that fine?"
"Ok," answered the children, and they obediently rose and ran back to their respective homes.
"Ai," the old woman gave a small grunt as she got up from her chair and started putting her walking stick to use.
The girl hurried to the woman's aid, and helped her into the house. "How is your back now, Grandma?" she asked in concern.
"Of course, it aches. Those children are such little rascals, though. I don't mind taking the trouble every now and then to tell them those tales." She gave her a toothy smile. "I just hope that all of them grow up to be as responsible and decent as you."
"Don't worry about that, Grandma," replied the girl, grinning. "I grew up with your stories too, didn't I? Now, you have a nice rest here and wait for dinner to be ready."
The old woman watched the girl resume her work in the kitchen for a while through the door, and closed her eyes. A light rain had started falling, and she could feel her right knee twitch slightly in pain.
"That's life," she sighed, and left the conscious world.
"Well now, where was I?" asked the old woman.
The boys and girls tried to tell her what they had already heard of the story. It was like a sudden burst of chattering among a group of birds; their voices combined were really just a myriad of excited twittering.
"Wait, wait, everyone, wait for your turn. Let's do this in a more organised way so I can hear what you all are saying."
She hummed a little, two fingers and a thumb on her chin, and picked out a boy who sat near the back of the crowd. "Can you tell me what I had said yesterday?"
"Yes, yes, I can!" he said eagerly, standing up to speak to the crowd. "You told us that Pan Gu appeared in this egg that was the world when there was nothing else. Uh..." he paused, trying to remember the words that she had used. "When there was nothing but chaos. And Pan Gu SWUNG his axe around! Like a very cool, strong man, and he broke the egg, and then the pieces became the earth and the sky. And he was very strong! He was so strong that he could hold the sky up. I want to be like him."
The woman chortled while the other children applauded the boy, and he reoccupied his spot on the ground.
"Thank you for that, boy. You really want to be like Pan Gu, boy? Well, I'm glad that you do!" she beamed at him.
"Well, as I had said, Pan Gu did not want the earth and the sky to merge together again, so he held them apart, standing all the time with his arms raised, without rest. Day and night he stood there valiantly, keeping the world in balance, his sweat rolling down his face and his body, but still, he never gave up, for he remembered what it was like in the egg.
"Slowly, the years passed. Yet, he still did not stop to rest. His sweat had formed oceans on the earth, while his tears of pain and exhaustion formed streams. Every day, he stretched himself as much as he could, pushing the sky and the earth apart by three metres. In order for him to keep pushing the earth and sky apart, he, too, grew three metres per day. He was tired, but he remembered the chaos that the world was when the earth and sky, two opposites, were mashed together. So he kept holding the heavy sky up, and stretching to keep up with the distance that was growing between heaven and earth.
"And do you know how long he kept at it, children?"
The children started throwing up numbers of varying length, though all were within the "hundreds and billions and zillions" category. One girl, however, was sitting there quietly and thinking. When the old woman had finally dismissed all of their answers to be incorrect, the girl spoke up.
"Eighteen thousand years, Grandma?"
"Aha!" shouted the old woman, clapping her hands once to get the effect. "Very smart, girl."
The girl grinned, delighted.
"Yes. So, he stood there, bearing with the pain, holding up the sky away from the earth, for eighteen thousand years. That was all he did in his life! He worked to keep the world in balance, gallantly taking such a heavy burden upon himself and making it his responsibility."
"So where is he now, Grandma?" asked a girl who seemed to be no older than three.
"He is no longer here. You see, after steadily increasing the distance between the earth and sky for eighteen thousand years, he was finally certain that the sky would not fall back down when he took his hands away from it. This being the first time that he had relaxed since he woke from his sleep, all the tiredness came back to his body. He felt extremely weak, and so he lay down and closed his eyes and fell asleep, never to awake again.
"Years after he died, slowly, his body became the world we know. His breath became the wind and the clouds; his voice became thunder and lightning; his right eye became the moon and his left, the sun; his arms and legs became the four directions of this world: North, East, South and West; his central body, fingers, thumbs and ears became the mountains; his blood formed the rivers; his veins, the roads; his beard and hair on his head became the stars; the hair on his body, the grass and trees; his flesh became the soil; his teeth and bones became metal and stones.
"And that, children, is the story of Pan Gu, how the world came to be."
Her audience cheered, "Waahh", in appreciation, and applauded.
"Now, before we end today's session, I would like to say something." She waited for someone to predict her intention.
"We can learn something from this," cried a boy.
"Right you are," she smiled. "You, boy," she pointed to the one who had declared his idolisation of Pan Gu, "you had said that you wanted to be just like him. Do you know what it takes to be him?"
"Strength!" he exclaimed.
"Of course, you need strength, but it is not just that. You need perseverence and determination. Despite the pain he went through, the extreme tiredness and his body's cry for a rest, he never gave up holding the sky from the earth, for he knew that if he did, the sky would fall back down and chaos would return. Can you do that, boy?"
The boy agreed firmly, and she gave an approving nod.
"So what about the rest of you children? Can you do that? To be as heroic and useful to the people as Pan Gu?" she questioned the village's future.
"Yes, we can," they assured her.
"Then that is the end of today's session." She rose from her chair, walking stick poised to begin her walk back into the house.
The children were about to thank Grandma as one when a girl inquired: "How did people come about, then?"
"Ah," she said, as if hitting upon a brilliant idea. "I will answer your question tomorrow, when we shall be hearing the story of the Nü Wa, all right?"
The children nodded cheerfully. They thanked the old woman and ran off on their way, to roleplay and discuss the story that they had just heard.
the end
hellsings_home)email: sciencensoccer_addict [at] hotmail.com
The old women picked up her walking stick and slowly walked out into the yard, where chickens and children ran wild.
"Come, children, come," she beckoned to the little ones playing happily in the sand. "It's story time."
Hearing this, the children stopped and then rushed to crowd around the frail old woman, who was making her way to her long-serving rattan chairunder the shade.
"Ahh," she let out a long breath of air, tired from the walking she had to do to reclaim her throne as the neighbourhood's mythical storyteller. "Well, children, are you ready to hear a new story today?"
The youngsters nodded happily, piping replies of "Yes, story, new story!" and "We like Grandma's story!" in an excited jumble of voices.
The old woman laughed. "The story we will hear today is the story of Pan Gu, how the world came to be."
The response elicited was a widening of eyes and a collective, impressed "Oooo...!"
"Once upon a time, there was no world," she began.
The children gasped. They looked at each other, as if trying to imagine a time where their friends did not exist. Smiling with a cheekiness that belonged to her youthful soul, the woman continued:
"There was nothing, only a mad swirl of things; confusion. There was only... chaos. It was not the type of chaos where you children go around creating trouble - it was a frightening, otherworldly chaos. There were no people, no fields, no animals, no sky, no sea. Only chaos.
"Now this chaos, because it was whirling about, was something like a big, giant egg. And for eighteen thousand years, there was nothing that existed, except for this egg of utter chaos. And then finally, something appeared within this egg. Bit by bit, this thing grew slowly, just a little with every passing day. This thing grew for another eighteen thousand years. This thing grew into what we now know as Pan Gu.
"Pan Gu was very big and very hairy; his face was covered by a beard that extended from the top of his head down the sides of his face, and stretched over the whole lower half of his face, not including his lips. Even his eyebrows looked like they had a beard of their own; they were wiry, thick and bushy. Pan Gu wasn't a normal human - he was a giant, having grown for a full eighteen thousand years, unlike us, who have lived for only the tiniest fraction of the time that Pan Gu had."
"How big was he, Grandma?" interrupted one boy.
"Oh, he was big, very big. So big that just a single tear of his would drown several of our towns!" said the woman, her arms in the air to impress upon her audience the sheer size of the giant.
The children took this in with the usual sound of awed wonder while the seasoned storyteller nodded in acknowledgement.
"And then one day, Pan Gu awoke from his long sleep. He stretched and yawned because his joints were very stiff from not having moved much in those long, eighteen thousand years. His joints were much stiffer than mine, though I'm sure he didn't feel as much pain as I do."
She chuckled.
"Stretching himself to relieve his limbs of that stiffness, he found himself touching something very hard and strong. It was the walls of the egg of chaos. The egg was too small for him to live happily within it, and no wonder, for he had just enough space to stand with his arms spread out! The egg was also too messy for him. Imagine, children, being in a tiny place much smaller than our toilet, with all these things flying around at such high speeds that you can't tell what they are. It would be very uncomfortable, wouldn't it?
"But Pan Gu put up with it for a while, until he decided that he would do something about this world. So he lifted his axe in his hands, and in his mighty arms, the axe swung dangerously in the air. The blade of the axe struck heavily against the walls of the egg, but it did not just stop there. Pan Gu kept swinging it around over his head, hacking at and wrecking the tough walls. Following this, the egg's shell disintegrated and its contents spilled out; the bright and lighter pieces of the shell rose and became the sky, while the dark and heavier portions sunk down and became the earth.
"Finally, Pan Gu was free of the constraints of the giant egg.
"However, the sky and the earth were not very far apart like they are now, and Pan Gu was afraid to be enclosed within a small space again. So despite his fatigue from breaking apart the egg, he stood up tall, and with his hands, held the sky and earth apart from each other."
Just then, a young girl stepped out into the yard. The old woman looked up and the children turned to see who had come; nodding apologetically to her elder, she addressed the children: "The sky is darkening. I suspect that a storm is coming. Go back into your houses, ok, everyone?"
The children groaned unhappily.
"I want to hear Grandma's story about Pan Gu!" a little girl protested. The rest of them chorused in agreement.
"Just go inside, children, Grandma can continue her story another time. Better to be warm and dry. Right, Grandma?"
"Yes, yes, of course," the old woman laughed lightly. "Listen to Big Sister, children. I'll continue with the story tomorrow, is that fine?"
"Ok," answered the children, and they obediently rose and ran back to their respective homes.
"Ai," the old woman gave a small grunt as she got up from her chair and started putting her walking stick to use.
The girl hurried to the woman's aid, and helped her into the house. "How is your back now, Grandma?" she asked in concern.
"Of course, it aches. Those children are such little rascals, though. I don't mind taking the trouble every now and then to tell them those tales." She gave her a toothy smile. "I just hope that all of them grow up to be as responsible and decent as you."
"Don't worry about that, Grandma," replied the girl, grinning. "I grew up with your stories too, didn't I? Now, you have a nice rest here and wait for dinner to be ready."
The old woman watched the girl resume her work in the kitchen for a while through the door, and closed her eyes. A light rain had started falling, and she could feel her right knee twitch slightly in pain.
"That's life," she sighed, and left the conscious world.
"Well now, where was I?" asked the old woman.
The boys and girls tried to tell her what they had already heard of the story. It was like a sudden burst of chattering among a group of birds; their voices combined were really just a myriad of excited twittering.
"Wait, wait, everyone, wait for your turn. Let's do this in a more organised way so I can hear what you all are saying."
She hummed a little, two fingers and a thumb on her chin, and picked out a boy who sat near the back of the crowd. "Can you tell me what I had said yesterday?"
"Yes, yes, I can!" he said eagerly, standing up to speak to the crowd. "You told us that Pan Gu appeared in this egg that was the world when there was nothing else. Uh..." he paused, trying to remember the words that she had used. "When there was nothing but chaos. And Pan Gu SWUNG his axe around! Like a very cool, strong man, and he broke the egg, and then the pieces became the earth and the sky. And he was very strong! He was so strong that he could hold the sky up. I want to be like him."
The woman chortled while the other children applauded the boy, and he reoccupied his spot on the ground.
"Thank you for that, boy. You really want to be like Pan Gu, boy? Well, I'm glad that you do!" she beamed at him.
"Well, as I had said, Pan Gu did not want the earth and the sky to merge together again, so he held them apart, standing all the time with his arms raised, without rest. Day and night he stood there valiantly, keeping the world in balance, his sweat rolling down his face and his body, but still, he never gave up, for he remembered what it was like in the egg.
"Slowly, the years passed. Yet, he still did not stop to rest. His sweat had formed oceans on the earth, while his tears of pain and exhaustion formed streams. Every day, he stretched himself as much as he could, pushing the sky and the earth apart by three metres. In order for him to keep pushing the earth and sky apart, he, too, grew three metres per day. He was tired, but he remembered the chaos that the world was when the earth and sky, two opposites, were mashed together. So he kept holding the heavy sky up, and stretching to keep up with the distance that was growing between heaven and earth.
"And do you know how long he kept at it, children?"
The children started throwing up numbers of varying length, though all were within the "hundreds and billions and zillions" category. One girl, however, was sitting there quietly and thinking. When the old woman had finally dismissed all of their answers to be incorrect, the girl spoke up.
"Eighteen thousand years, Grandma?"
"Aha!" shouted the old woman, clapping her hands once to get the effect. "Very smart, girl."
The girl grinned, delighted.
"Yes. So, he stood there, bearing with the pain, holding up the sky away from the earth, for eighteen thousand years. That was all he did in his life! He worked to keep the world in balance, gallantly taking such a heavy burden upon himself and making it his responsibility."
"So where is he now, Grandma?" asked a girl who seemed to be no older than three.
"He is no longer here. You see, after steadily increasing the distance between the earth and sky for eighteen thousand years, he was finally certain that the sky would not fall back down when he took his hands away from it. This being the first time that he had relaxed since he woke from his sleep, all the tiredness came back to his body. He felt extremely weak, and so he lay down and closed his eyes and fell asleep, never to awake again.
"Years after he died, slowly, his body became the world we know. His breath became the wind and the clouds; his voice became thunder and lightning; his right eye became the moon and his left, the sun; his arms and legs became the four directions of this world: North, East, South and West; his central body, fingers, thumbs and ears became the mountains; his blood formed the rivers; his veins, the roads; his beard and hair on his head became the stars; the hair on his body, the grass and trees; his flesh became the soil; his teeth and bones became metal and stones.
"And that, children, is the story of Pan Gu, how the world came to be."
Her audience cheered, "Waahh", in appreciation, and applauded.
"Now, before we end today's session, I would like to say something." She waited for someone to predict her intention.
"We can learn something from this," cried a boy.
"Right you are," she smiled. "You, boy," she pointed to the one who had declared his idolisation of Pan Gu, "you had said that you wanted to be just like him. Do you know what it takes to be him?"
"Strength!" he exclaimed.
"Of course, you need strength, but it is not just that. You need perseverence and determination. Despite the pain he went through, the extreme tiredness and his body's cry for a rest, he never gave up holding the sky from the earth, for he knew that if he did, the sky would fall back down and chaos would return. Can you do that, boy?"
The boy agreed firmly, and she gave an approving nod.
"So what about the rest of you children? Can you do that? To be as heroic and useful to the people as Pan Gu?" she questioned the village's future.
"Yes, we can," they assured her.
"Then that is the end of today's session." She rose from her chair, walking stick poised to begin her walk back into the house.
The children were about to thank Grandma as one when a girl inquired: "How did people come about, then?"
"Ah," she said, as if hitting upon a brilliant idea. "I will answer your question tomorrow, when we shall be hearing the story of the Nü Wa, all right?"
The children nodded cheerfully. They thanked the old woman and ran off on their way, to roleplay and discuss the story that they had just heard.
the end
