YH-071

This is a traditional story narrated by YZQ. It was recorded by Nathaniel Sims. The content of the story is summarized as follows:

A long time ago there was a family of people. Someone in the family died and so they sent the son to go buy funeral paper. The son was rather stupid and couldn’t remember how to say funeral paper. He said to himself, what am I to do? I won’t remember how to say it and if it’s written down I can read it anyway. So his father told him to walk down the road to Maoxian repeating “funeral paper” all the way. He did this but along the way, a pheasant flew by and startled him. He accidentally changed the words he was repeating and after this, he repeated gibberish syllables all the way down to Maoxian. He got to the store and asked for [wutʂɨtʂɨ] (nonsense). The store owner couldn’t understand what he wanted and asked him? What do you mean [wutʂɨtʂɨ] what do you want? The son couldn’t think and so he said, “Banging on a sheepskin drum and sheep bleating” (making a reference to funerary preparations). Only by his doing this was the shopkeeper able to understand that he wanted to buy funeral paper. 

The duration of this recording is: [00:01:33].