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The White Turtle
A fisherman catches a white turtle; townsfolk vie to buy it for soup, but he pities it and releases it into the river. Years later the dyke breaks, and as flood swallows his family by night, a giant white turtle rises bearing his boat to high ground. When the waters fall, it is gone.
The Tea Maid
The woman who brews tea at the south-market house shows each drinker, in the cup, the one they cannot forget.
The Rain Mistress
A flower-selling crone in the west of the city brings fine rain with a sigh; a youth begs for a downpour, is refused, and learns why when the flood comes.
The Bee God
In a Miao mountain village of eastern Guizhou, aged beekeeper Long Laoyan mends a wounded wild queen bee and is repaid for years: her swarm guards his hives and warns him of floods. A greedy neighbor who raids the nest is driven by the bees over a terrace cliff. A tale of wild mercy and just return.
The Inkstone's Servant
A poor Suzhou scholar, Fang Shouzhuo, pawns his coat for a battered inkstone and finds within it a tiny ink-spirit, Xuan Nu, who writes only for the down-and-out with true talent. As Fang rises to office and his pen turns to flattery, the ink grows pale and the spirit departs—leaving a hollow stone and a man who has lost his own voice.
The Returning Swallow
An old woman's swallows return to her rafters each year. When her son moves her to a new city home, the swallows find no mistress and patch the old beam with mud, waiting. When she returns, one swallow has died among the rafters, leaving a fresh handful of mud like a nest just begun.
The Cricket
A mischievous boy saves a drowning cricket and keeps it in a bamboo cage. When plague comes, the cricket chirps wildly at midnight, driving the whole family outside just before the roof beam collapses. By morning the cricket lies dead.
The Ink Fox
A poor scholar in an abandoned house hears grinding in the night and sees a small ink-black fox licking his inkstone. His writing flourishes — yet what the fox rewards is not talent, but sincerity.