This week I decided to go with a Taiwanese Fairy Tale. A Tigress Witch (Hoko Po) was a short gruesome fairy tale. I will say I did rather enjoy it. In this tale it starts off explaining how people used to believe that when an animal grew old enough it was able to change into a human and then devour other humans. The mother of two daughters has to head to the city and worries about her two daughters. She tells them to lock the door and not let anyone in. Soon after the mother leaves there is a loud knock at the door with someone claiming to be their mother. They let the person in only to discover it is not their mother. The old woman then claims to be a great aunt of theirs. The older sister is not trusting of the old woman but the younger one is naive and tired and so she sleeps with the old woman while the older sister sleeps in another room. The older sister wakes up to loud crunching sound only to discover that the tigress witch has eaten her younger sister. She tricks the tigress and hides up in a tree but the tigress soon discovers her up in the tree. The older sister tricks the tigress one last time the result of which ends in the tigress witch's death. This is your typical lesson of listening to what your parents tell you and to not trust strangers. I really enjoyed this one since it had the familiarities of your typical fairy tale while still being different.
For next weeks fairy tale I'm thinking of maybe doing a South African tale or Nigerian tale.
4 comments:
Wow, that's an interesting one, and pretty creepy.
I'm not sure I've read many, if any Taiwanese tales, but this one has me intrigued . . . though it also sounds a bit creepy as Carol states!
Came here doing research of "Hoko Po" or "Tenaku" ... my grandma always telling me story since a kid.. she passed away on january 2019... i am a medium and i was curious what they write on internet , and end up find two stories of Taiwanese shared.. i am hokkien and mixed ethnicity but born in bengkalis, riau, indonesia
and She always told me when i was a kid, to do not go out alone in the wild especially.. there was/is many "hoko po" .. but , since human population growth, many houses or buildings.. these " #hokopo became rare 'cause scare with crowd.... she adding and i remember everything she said . She said that, hokopo has a long nail, looks like an old lady, and Hokopo loves children especially, and will catch them if she them
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