At the end of the year, when cleaning at home, I found a childhood villain book called "Grandma Wolf". Of course, this book is not an import of Grimm's fairy tales or Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, but a complete "Chinese product".
How this book will be preserved to this day, I have forgotten it myself, but when I saw the cover, the coolness came to my mind again, and the "horror memories" of my childhood were awakened, and it turned out that when I was a child, I was frightened by this book, so I deliberately hid somewhere.
Looking back at "Wolf Grandma" now, I find that the story is actually very simple: it is said that there was a peasant family in the early years of the Jin Dynasty, and the male owner of the family joined the army, and only the mother and three children were left in the family. One day the mother went to the city to sell cloth, and the three children stayed at home.
The mother told the children not to open the door, and not long after leaving, the wolf came. Dressed as a grandmother, she used all sorts of tricks to trick the three children and open the door for it.
At first, Grandma Wolf was also "conscientious" and took good care of her three children. But in the evening, the horror began. In this paragraph, I excerpt the original text, I believe that everyone will recall the "childhood" senses:
In the middle of the night, my sister seemed to hear my grandmother eating, so she asked, "What is my grandmother eating?
"Grandma" said, "I'm eating peanuts."
My sister said, "Can I eat some?" “。
"Grandma" did not make a sound, as if thinking about something, and the voice stopped.
After a while, there was a "click, click" sound again.
My sister asked, "Grandma, what are you eating again?" ”
".....eat fried beans." Grandma replied.
"I want to eat it too..." said my sister.
"Grandma" had to hand some to her sister, but the sister felt nothing like peanuts in her hand, slimy, and prickly as if she were finger bones. Touching the bed again, the little sister and the little brother were gone. Now she understood that grandma had eaten her brother and sister and was about to eat herself.
This detailed description of this detail, until now there will still be a "psychological shadow". Of course, in the end, the sister "escaped from the ascension" with wisdom. Because this villain book belongs to a single "comic strip", I once thought it was picked out of "Liaozhai Zhiyi". Because when I bought this book, it was when the TV series "Liaozhai" was popular, and I felt that the details in the TV series were similar to those in the book. Looking back at this story now, I find that in fact, the ancient Chinese Zhiwei novels are very good at setting off the atmosphere, and the story of "Wolf Grandmother" is more expansive than any novel in "Liaozhai Zhiyi".
The story of "Wolf Grandmother" originated from Wei Jin and is a strange history novel written by Xuan of the Six Dynasties of Wei and Jin. Compiled into part of the "Strange Talk of the Six Dynasties". In addition, there have been "resets" of the story in the books "Taiping Imperial Records", "Taiping Guangji", "Fayuan Zhulin", and "Youminglu".
The storylines of these "resets" are similar, three children, a wolf grandmother, but the tragic ending of "total annihilation" in the end. Therefore, it seems that the origin of the story is earlier than that of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it has been circulated in other countries in Asia, such as Korea, Japan, And Malaysia.
In ancient China, there were not such developed electronic networks as there are now, and the dissemination of information was actually difficult. But from Asia to Europe, there will be this type of story, how do parents know this story and pass it on by word of mouth?
Of course, this type of story also appears in Europe, where the most famous "wolf grandmother" is in "Little Red Riding Hood", but the story content is quite different from the Asian region, but if you think about it, this "main line" is still consistent.
First of all, in the absence of adults, the wolf puts on clothes and pretends to be "grandma". Then use a series of rhetoric to deceive the children's trust, and finally "take the child down", and the timeline is all "at night". This seems to be a consistent "routine".
Of course, Europe's "Little Red Riding Hood" is much more "harmonious" than China's, and in the end there were no casualties, including the wolf who only had a lesson of "sewing a stone in his stomach". And the Best Ending in the Chinese version is only one person who escapes.
As a bedtime story for children, "Grandma Wolf" can be said to be a thriller. In the ghost legend of "animals becoming spirits", wolves learn to dress up and transform into "grandmothers". In particular, children are not yet able to recognize the truth. It is completely possible to scare the child into a stunned.
Of course, according to the local characteristics of China, the image of the wolf grandmother will also change slightly. In Lingnan and Minyue regions, there is also a similar figure called "Tiger Aunt". This story is actually from the "Biography of tiger concubines" written by Huang Zhijun in the Qing Dynasty.
It is about a tiger that has become a spirit, deceives two children who visit their aunt, and transforms into the appearance of an aunt, lures the sisters and brothers into the mountains, and then eats the younger brother. The sister escaped by chance and eventually killed the tiger with the help of a woodcutter.
The whole story also belongs to the "reproduction" of "Grandma Wolf", but the style of writing tends to be more inclined to "Liaozhai Zhiyi". And this "tiger aunt" also has a source can be traced back, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties Lingnan tiger plague is serious, originally as a "barbarian land" suddenly because of the relationship between the sharp increase in population, the ecological balance was broken, many local county records have "tigers into villages and towns hurt people" record.
Tiger cannibalism was a big event at the time, and it was most appropriate as a "case" that can scare children, and "tigers become sperm" is even more incredible. Because tiger infestations often occur in the Lingnan region, and animals that often "intersect" with people in other areas, most of them are wolves, so "wolves" become "grandmothers" also came into being. Further north, animals such as "big horse monkeys" and "bear blind men" become the protagonists. From these transformed animals, we can see the cultural changes in different regions.
However, why is the "lying gun character" "grandmother". Instead of "Grandpa Wolf" or "Uncle Wolf"? Because in the early agricultural life, in addition to the parents, the closest elder in the family was the "grandmother". Once the "grandmother" changes, it is definitely the most terrifying thing. So this "weird grandmother" has become a "genre story".
Many of the early fairy tales came from such "zhiwei novels". Although this type of novel and the legend of gods and ghosts have a lot of religious and superstitious overtones, their significance is to educate the world, as a story of children's education, it is still very effective.
These stories were produced and popular in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, many of which belong to early legends, so they are included in many books, such as the "Divine Anomaly Classic" and "Natural history" that describe the regional terroir; the "Han Wu Story" and "The Inner Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty" that describe the history of the wild; the "Search God Record", "Lieyi Biography", "Immortal Biography", and "Houshuo Shen" that tell strange stories of ghosts and gods, all of which have several "variants" of a story. This is all because the content circulated has been revised several times.
The legend of The Wolf Grandmother, in fact, in the final analysis, is to prevent "people" rather than "wolves". We all know this type of story, and its purpose is to hope that young children will be vigilant and not trust strangers.
This fairy tale is made up so "shocking", which is ultimately to implant this "anti-human signal" directly into the child's subconscious. And those who want to guard against are commonly known as "old kidnappers."
The so-called "old kidnappers" are now referred to as human traffickers and beggar gangs. History says, "The abductor, the lame, the blind, the severed, do what they are, and make them ask for money." "It means to trick a child into all kinds of cripples, and then use it to beg for profit."
In the "Qing Barnyard Banknote" there is a story of a "human bear", which tells that during the Qianlong period, in the area of Suzhou Tiger Hill, there was a particularly magical dog bear that could write and chant poetry, people felt very surprised, and often paid a few dollars for the dog bear to write and write poetry.
As a result, once, the bear took advantage of the beggar leader to go out and write to the audience for help. It turned out that he was originally from Changsha, and when he was a child, he was abducted by a beggar, and then the beggar first stabbed him with blood and cut off his tongue. Then he found a bear, killed it, and then draped the bear skin on him to make money as a bear.
The audience was horrified and immediately reported to the officials. The government sent out a fast catcher, a beggar sent to Yousi, and killed him according to the law of harvesting and cutting. Escort the "human bear" to Changsha and return his home. ”
This case is called "harvesting and cutting", which has appeared until modern society, and its frightening degree is not weaker than that of "wolf grandmother". On the other hand, this is the same as the story of "Grandma Wolf".
The horror fairy tales of "Grandma Wolf" have been passed down from generation to generation, and fundamentally, they are derived from real horror events. Moreover, as a "warning" type of fairy tale, the speed of circulation is fast, the cost is low, and it can also be combined with various regional cultures, and the effect is more effective than the general "reasoning". Like myself, I was completely frightened by this story when I was a child, and I was especially vigilant when I saw strangers.
Therefore, as a well-known fairy tale, "Grandma Wolf" contains more than just "horror", he makes every child aware of the hidden threat, which is also the first step out of society.