Stepmother's story

Xibe folk stories, spread in Xibe Autonomous County, Qabqal, Xinjiang.

There was once a man whose wife died of a sudden illness, leaving him with a seventeen-year-old daughter.

Because the father was on an errand, he seldom came home, and did not care for his daughter, so he married a widow.

The widow had a daughter eight years old. Soon the stepmother began to abuse the child, treating her daughter as a treasure.

The more beautiful the ex-wife's daughter grew, the more ugly the stepmother's daughter grew, and the stepmother took evil to push her into the well and fill it up.

When the father came back, the stepmother lied that her daughter had died of a sudden illness.

The grieving father found that a willow sapling had grown from the mouth of the old well into a big tree in a few days. There was a beautiful bird on the tree that could sing ninety-nine kinds of tunes and was very sad.

His father put it in the cage, and his stepmother poisoned it and threw it into the furnace to burn it and dump it outside.

The next day, the neighbor's lonely grandmother found a bright emerald in the ashes, and the emerald turned into a beautiful girl.

One day, the girl prepared a table of food, and asked the old grandmother to invite her father and stepmother to be guests.

During the dinner, the girl told a tragic story, and the father suddenly realized, was furious, and immediately sent the stepmother to the government for punishment.