Yao-Chinese Folktales 2

The first day of 2026 brought a new episode of the animated anthology Yao-Chinese Folktales 2 (中国奇谭2). Like many, I had enjoyed the first season, yet its stories faded from memory too quickly. This time, I decided to do more than just watch. The tale of the three snakes presented a simple fable, but one that clung to the mind long after the screen went dark. It asks a profound question: what defines a dragon? Is it the celestial mandate, the horns and the majesty, or is it something earned through grit and sacrifice on the dusty earth? This story, set against a drought-stricken village and a forbidding mountain, offers a quiet, powerful answer. A Hopeless Quest The three brothers—a pragmatic leader, a chatty second, and a simple, kind-hearted third—begin their journey with a clear, almost naive goal. They are not mighty. They are small snakes surviving on stolen offerings from villagers praying to the Dragon King for rain. The eldest understands a cruel truth: people worship power that solves problems. Their reverence for the Dragon King stems not from love, but from a desperate need for his rain. So, the snakes embark on a pilgrimage to learn this divine…

The second episode of the animated anthology Yao-Chinese Folktales 2 (中国奇谭2) , titled "Ear Dweller (耳中人)," presents a puzzle. It is not a straightforward narrative but a dense, visual poem about desire. While its sibling episode "How to Be Three Dragons" deals with communal aspiration, this story turns inward. It asks what happens when a lonely heart fixates on an impossible fantasy. The tale is an adaptation, yet it boldly reimagines its source to probe the darker corners of longing. At its core, it is a portrait of obsession—how it begins as a whisper and grows into a scream that drowns out the real world. A Seed from Strange Tales The story finds its roots in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异). The original is brief: a scholar named Tan Jinxuan (谭晋玄), obsessed with Daoyin (导引) breathing exercises, hears a tiny person speaking in his ear. He coaxes it out, only for a neighbor’s interruption to scare it away. The scholar then falls into madness. This classical tale serves as a clear warning against excessive fixation, or what Buddhism calls Wo Zhi (我执), the attachment to self. The animated version takes this seed and plants it in richer, more…