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My favorite Chinese myth or legend
There are lots of legends and myths in China, “Liangzhu” is my favorite myth, which happened at Jin dynasty (A.D. 400), a famous Chinese myth like \"romeo and juliet\". There is a story known as “Butterfly Lovers” –a tragedy of love.
\"Liangzhu\" is the abbreviation of two names, of a boy and a girl. The boy's name is Liang Shanbo, and the girl is Zhu Yingtai. Zhu from a rich family, but she couldn't go to school, only boys were allowed to entrance school at that times. So Zhu decided to pretend to be a boy and went to school. She met Liang there and loved him. One day Zhu received a letter from her father and learned her mother was ill, so Zhu decided to go home. But he found out her mother was perfectly well when she arrived home, and her father had arranged her to marry a wealthy man. Two months later, Liang visited Zhu’s home, he found out Zhu was a girl and fell in love with her. However, he also learned the news of her arranged marriage. He was sad and became ill. He died before Zhu married. When Zhu learned the news, she was filled with deep sorrow and insisted to go to Liang’s tomb before the wedding ceremony took place. When Zhu sobbed before the tomb, all of a sudden, the tomb was open. Zhu jumped into the tomb. Then two butterflies flew out of the tomb, flying closely together. People all thought the two butterflies were incarnations of Zhu and Liang
I like this myth very much, as it can show us the marital custom in ancient time of China. Young people are struggling to “Freedom-Love”, but failure at the end. And the musician developed a symphony acc. to this myth, it including different fair-sounding phases, Happiness (Liang and Zhu learned at school), Loving (Fall in love), Tragedy(Liang dead), and mythical (Liang and Zhu became two butterflies). |
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