I mean, when I think Asian fantasy, the images I get are vastly different from what I'd call Fairy Tale. I'm rather more thinking of women on the moon, elixirs, and probably a lot of the Chinese variant of Buddhism? The moon god and the 18 levels of hell, the yellow river, the burning of paper and paper houses. I'm also thinking of Wuxia, with the sort of kung-fu that's basically magical realism (though I don't understand magical realism enough to say for sure). The "teacher" figure and the tragic lovers themes. A lot of blood poisoning and "casting out" happens too. One of the most famous Chinese classics is of course The Journey to the West. Animal spirit creatures that can take the form of humans, but there's no equivalent term for these things I think as they're not really shapeshifters. Terms in Chinese tend to have a more spiritual and sometimes demonic feeling about the things it's describing. It kinda depends on what tribute meant. Is it simply using Chinese cultural elements as inspiration? I once came across a poster made in Hong Kong that's super interesting. It illustrates dozens and dozens of Cantonese proverbs - and I never realised how many demons and ghosts and how much death were in those phrases lol. In the link, it shows you which picture relates to which proverb and an audio clip of how each sounds, and what they mean. It's kinda cool. https://writecantonese8.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/cantonese-proverbs-in-one-picture/
I love mythology and have been studying it—loosely, just the stuff I'm interested in— mostly Greek and Norse so far, and I know absolutely nothing about Chinese mythology or legend. It all seems almost impenetrable for a Westerner, or like it would take a lifetime to learn how to sort it all out. Are there books or sources a person could learn from?
I can't say I know that much about it either - moved away from Hong Kong far too early to know too much depth. But I do know tropes and some story conventions simply from stories, TV, books and the like. Youtube brought up a host of Chinese myths. I think a lot of our stories could be linked back to all the four-worded proverbs we have. There's one, for example, that basically says, "The loss of a horse is not bad thing." To illustrate that when something unlucky happens, it might not be so unlucky after all. For example if, say, you miss your bus (unlucky), but then that bus goes on to crash (you avoided a crash because you missed it = lucky). There's a whole Aesop Tale type story to it. Perhaps looking into the origins of these proverbs would bring up a great number of stories to read. There's another tale that has a four-worded proverb attached to it, which goes something like: When the younger brother gives up his pear. The moral is, because the younger brother is smaller, he does not need so much food, so he willingly gives up his pear for his bigger brother to eat. I do have a book on this geared towards children, but it's all written in Chinese... I mean, if it's of interest, I could probably try and translate one or two.
Now you're talking the crazy talk! I was just thinking you might know of a few books in English, if not that's fine. It's really the OP's job to do the research if they want to. We can point to some good resources if we know of any, that's about all we can do.
Well, not got a clue where I put the Chinese one, but I found this instead! It's in comic book form in English I honestly haven't a clue if these count as fairy tales, myths or what - probably way closer to Aesop's Tales lol. You can click on them to expand (the full image was gigantic). I included the "losing a horse" one.
I don't have much to suggest, but I would ask if you've read any George Macdonald. He was the master of the fairy story. He's the one who wrote the famous Golden Key which was a little too esoteric and spiritual for my liking. One of my favourite short stories, however, is The History of Photogen and Nycteris. Fairly sure this man should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in fairy stories and myth-making. He's also Scottish.
I think I downloaded a couple of his books when I was hitting up Gutenberg and Archive.org for fairy-tale and mythology stuff.
Here's the thing about dragons - they're portrayed rather differently in Western and Eastern mythology. Western stories largely treat dragons as evil monster to be slain, whereas Eastern myths see dragons as elemental, or heavenly creatures which are often protectors. They also look rather different. You can certainly build in cultural elements, but if you do so, be careful of taking it too far away from the fairy tale motif, because not all of your readers will recognise what you are doing. Aladdin is originally supposed to have been set in "one of the cities of China", despite it having an identifiably Middle Eastern setting (e.g. the "djinn" or "genies"). Fun fact - did you know that Chinese dragons have five toes, Korean dragons have four and Japanese dragons have three? The reason being because when a dragon travels further away from its homeland, toes start dropping off.
Maybe add in chinese houses that the hero/heroine would be in and a bird to send the message by one of the princesses asking for help on a piece of paper? Maybe add in the princesses fathers worrying about the princesses and asking for help and the one who would rescue them would win the money prize? And definitely dragons, a tall chinese tower where the princesses are stuck in. And tea.
Yes, that's more in line with what I meant... Plus I was studying a lot of Chinese history and was even watching some Chinese dramas, and looking up old mythologies and legends as well. I like to read fairytales with a fairly dark undertone (light on the surface), similar to tales such as The Juniper Tree, The Little Mermaid (Original version by Hans Christen Anderson) and The Little Match Girl, Swan Lake, Faust (Wolfgang Goethe version), Grimm's Fairytales, Into the Woods (stage-play version), The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter), Revolutionary Girl Utena (an old anime I watched)... And I like to think about the realistic implications of fairytales if they ever came true... Plus I think the traditional Prince in most fairytales is so cliché and boring... Why can't the princess ever rescue herself?
