Source: Wolfram Eberhard. (1952) Chinese Festivals. New York NY: Henry Schuman, p.43-44

The Story of the Ancestral Tablets

A common feature of the rural Chinese home is the ancestral tablet. This folktale provides one version of how such tablets came to be.

I once asked a Chinese schoolboy about the origin of the ancestral tablet, and he told me the following story:

Once upon a time there was a very cruel and bad man who did not love his mother. He did nothing she wanted him to do, but only scolded her. Whenever he came home he immediately wanted a meal. But who can make a wole meal in a minute? So be beat her and scolded her. But the softhearted woman did not complain. One day, when working in the fields, the son heard the cawing of crows in the air and saw a crow with food in its mouth, coming from a far away place to a tree at the corner of the field, to feed its young. He was moved and thought, “These crow are birds but even they collect food from their relatives and care for them. This means that I am not even as good as a bird. I am acting ungratefully towards my mother. My father died long ago, and even if I were to behave as well as I could, I still could not make her forget his death. Shame on me.” He decided to be nice to his mother from then on.

Just at this time, his mother came to bring him his lunch. As soon as he saw her, he started running toward her to take lunch so that she wouldn’t have to walk so far. It was his first good deed for the old lady. But how could she know about his sudden change of heart? She thought he would beat her as usual. So she hurriedly put down the basket with the lunch and started running away. It happened that she hit a small tree, fell down and died. The son was deeply disturbed, and in order to keep his mother and this unhappy event in mind forever, he cut down the small tree and made a small tablet which he preserved. Thus the ancestral tablet came into being.

Good reading and blessings, Cat Wayland

Trackback URI | Comments RSS