Last week I volunteered to drive students in my son’s class to a local theatre to see Cinderellas. This wasn’t the regular run-of-the mill Cinderella play though, so instead of just dropping the kids off, I purchased a ticket for the show. Put on by ABC Let’s Act, this production presented the story of Cinderella as told in four different traditions: Walt Disney’s, the Chinese, the First Nations and the Korean versions. Did you know that there are over 300 versions of the story of Cinderella throughout the world?

The young cast did a wonderful job of telling the story of four Cinderellas from four different cultures and proved that Cinderella can indeed have brown eyes and black hair! It truly was a multicultural experience with aspects of traditional Chinese theatre, a Korean fan dance, Tae Kwon Do martial arts and the singing of a sacred First Nations song that has been passed down from generation to generation. Director Mandy Tulloch says she wanted to ensure that each version of Cinderella was shown in a manner that was true to its respective culture:

Advisors were consulted to make sure the play was as culturally responsible as possible. In the segment from China, we utilize the traditional method in Chinese theatre where the audience is asked for permission for the performance to take place. We also have the property men as well. For the First Nations piece, we were granted permission by the local elders for the performance to take place. They also blessed the show and worked with us on the music and mask making. In the Korean segment, which was written specifically for this show, you will see an authentic Korean Fan Dance performed by kids as well as award winning Tae Kwon Do artists.

Multicultural versions of Cinderella abound in children’s and young adult books too. To get a sense of what’s out there, check out our blog posts Globe-trotting Cinderella and Bound by Donna Jo Napoli and Books at Bedtime: Fairy Tales (2); and read this review of Abadeha: The Philippine Cinderella, which forms part of our current focus on the Philippines…

I can’t believe this book was first published 25 years ago: but Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China, retold by Ai-Ling Louie and illustrated by Ed Young, is just as fresh today – and of course, being a fairy-tale, it is timeless anyway. It makes a lovely bed-time story – and would work well, too, as a class story-time readaloud.

The story will be familiar in its essence to most children and this is a lovely variation. Or perhaps I should say that the Cinderella story we all know and love follows the pattern of this lovely story: on the book’s dedication page, there is a salient quotation from Iona and Peter Opie’s The Classic Fairy Tales (now a bit of a classic itself). This dates the story of Yeh Shen to The Miscellaneous Record of Yu Yang, which first appeared during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907AD), about 1,000 years before the oldest European version.

The major elements are all there: the rags and chores, the wicked step-mother, the party and the magic slippers. The main difference is that the fairy god-mother figure in the story is actually a magic fish. The fish is Yeh-Shen’s only friend until it is killed by the step-mother. Yeh-Shen learns of its magic powers and gathers up the bones, which can now grant her special wishes. At first, her requests are bound up with survival as she asks for food to eat; but then, as the party approaches:

“Oh, dear friend,” she said, kneeling before the precious bones, “I long to go to the festival, but I cannot show myself in these rags. Is there somewhere I could borrow clothes fit to wear to the feast?” At once she found herself dressed in a gown of azure blue [and] on her tiny feet were the most beautiful slippers she had ever seen. They were woven of golden threads, in a pattern like the scales of a fish…

The fish is also the motif for Ed Young’s stunning illustrations throughout: each image from the story is set against an enormous, carp-like fish, to the extent that sometimes the characters are even enclosed within its gaping mouth. The backgrounds are starkly white but the pages are divided up into red-bordered, screen-like frames, which also help to convey the magic at work, since the fish’s bulk simply moves across them. Young’s shading is beautiful… and I would love to know how many colors he actually used!