Like many of you, we’re most familiar with the Disney and Charles Perrault version of Cinderella. So imagine our delight when we did a search and found out that the original Cinderella was actually a Chinese lass called Ye Xian!

The story of Ye Xian was written by Tuan Ch’eng-Shih almost a millenium ago, and later compiled in an anthology called the Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang. From what we gleaned off the web, much of the themes of the Cinderella tale remains the same – a lovely girl with an evil stepmother and mean stepsisters (in Ye Xian’s case, only one), a ball that the heroine is exempted from, and some form of supernatural aid that protects her and gets her to the ball (this would be Ye Xian’s deceased mother, who has taken the form of a fish). And of course, the magic slipper that leads the king to our heroine. And if you’ve ever wondered about the allure of Cinderella’s small feet – it actually makes sense in our Chinese Cinderella’s case! After all, think of the ancient Chinese bound foot and the culture that preceded it. A small foot is a beautiful thing in Chinese culture, no wonder the King was so smitten with Ye Xian!

Click here to check out a Chinese writer’s opinion of so called “western copyright infringement” of our fairytales. Yes Mr Perrault, we know where you got your idea from!

image by MIEL,via Asiaone.com