Release Date: 19 April, 2017
La Cenicienta China
(Chinese Cinderella), recounts Duan Chengshi's version of an early Cinderella.
The story starts with a local miner called Wu. He had two wives and had a daughter with each one. One of them dies, so her daughter has to move in with the other wife, referred to as a stepmother. But the stepmother is really envious and cruel. She forced the girl to live in the pigpens and painfully bound her feet. Which ended up so small that she called her Yeh Shen (meaning lotus foot). She grew up in this house, while having to take care of the worst chores at home, and cried a lot.
But one day, while doing laundry by the river, she met a giant golden fish. She befriended the fish and visited it every day. But her stepmother found out about it and decided to disguise herself to deceive the fish to gut it and cook it. And they ate it completely, only leaving the bones. Yeh Shen just took the bones to the river, where she started crying. There an old man told him that the bones are a final gift from the fish and that if she wishes anything to them, they will fulfill it.
One day a festival was fast approaching. There single girls would be looking for bachelors. Yeh Shen wanted to go to the festival, but her stepmother forbid her. She decided to go against her orders and wished upon the bones, which gave it a lot of nice clothes and makeover so she can go to the festival. She was the most beautiful girl there, which made both her stepmother and half-sister really jealous. But since she didn't want to be recognized by them, she decided to flee the place... But she forgot one of her shoes on the stairs.
A merchant found the shoe and sold it to another merchant, who in turn sold it to a king, who got obsessed with it and wanted to find its owner. His great plan was to... leave the shoe in the middle of the road and wait for all the girls who surely would want to try on it, while he and his entourage wait behind some bushes. The stepmother then sent her daughter over there to try on the shoe. When she noticed that it was too small, her mother just cut off her toes. But this didn't fool the king, who saw all the blood spilling. Meanwhile, Yeh Shen was in a bind, since the bones' magic had run out. She noticed the shoe and decided to conspicuously take it back home. But the king went ahead and chased her.
The moment she put the shoe on again, all the magical stuff appears once again. And the moment he sees how beautiful she is, decides to take her with him. He then sends the stepmother and her daughter to live in a cave, where they die by a rock slide... Abruptly ending the story, but Yeh Shen had a happy ending.
Tropes
- Agony of the Feet: The half-sister cutting her toes to try to get the shoe to fit.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The song points several times that Yeh Shen is beautiful, and in turn points out how ugly her stepmother and half-sibling are. They compare the stepmother to Jabba de Hutt, and say that her daughter is more troll than girl.
- Captain Obvious: One verse after the half-sister cuts her toes to get the shoe to fit, but she was spilling blood all over the place.And even though it's hard to believe, this plan didn't work out.
- Mood Whiplash: By the end of the song, the antagonists outcome is sung in a very somber and scary tone talking about how they died in a rock slide... And then immediately goes back to happily sing about the moral of the story.
- Spoof Aesop: You shouldn't stalk Chinese girls from bushes, someone might report you. And run to the hospital if you cut off your toes.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The story just says that Yeh Shen's mother died. But after that point, there is no mention about her dad or why he cannot help her.
