2010 is the Year of the Tiger so I have chosen a book that features a tiger in its telling. White Tiger, Blue Serpent is an old Chinese tale from the Drung tribe in Yunnan. Retold by Grace Tseng (illustrated by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng, published by Lothrop, Lee and Shepherd, 1999), the story is about a young boy named Kai whose poor mother is a weaver of brocades. Kai supports his mother in her work by fishing and collecting firewood. The brocades his mother makes are sold in the market to buy food and silk supplies. The two live frugally on the impoverished west bank of a great roaring river which divides it from the magical and mountainous east — a land guarded by a ferocious white tiger and monstrous blue serpent in the service of the jealous goddess Qin.
One day Kai asks his mother to make a special brocade just for him. She knows that such a brocade will take a long time to weave — a thousand days — and will require Kai to work hard like a man and not a boy. Kai is up to the challenge; he takes his mother’s latest brocade to market and sells it to buy an ox and rice seedlings. He will become a farmer as well as a fisherman to support his mother’s grand endeavour. After a thousand days, the brocade is ready. It is so beautiful that the goddess Qin snatches it away from Kai with a gust of wind that transports the brocade into her highly guarded realm. What will Kai do? In order to get the brocade back, he must venture into the mountains and face the tiger and the serpent.
In this story, the tiger represents a fearsome obstacle and will be a test of Kai’s budding manhood. The illustrations in the book by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng make this more than amply clear. What stories of tigers have you read and what emotion have they elicited in you as a reader? Fear? Awe? Admiration? Tell us about your favorite books about tigers!