The great quarrel

Once a long time ago, all people spoke the same language, and they all lived in the far north where it was cold all the time. All the animals lived there too, and they were always cold. The rabbits and the birds, the insects and the bears all spoke the same language, and all were cold all the time.

One day a man went outside during the coldest day of the year and felt so cold that he decided to leave immediately to search for a better place to live. He walked and walked and finally came to a large mountain range, called the Long White Mountains, and beyond that, a place where the sun shone brightly and it was warm much of the time. The rivers flowed without ice, the trees were green, not white with snow, and the man felt comfortable in his nakedness.

He returned to his village and told all the people about the land where the sun shone, and all began to make plans to leave. Insects inside the huts heard about the land, and they told the birds, the deer, and the bears. All the people began to leave, and most of the animals left too, except for those who had warm coats to stand the cold. The man who had found the warm land decided not to go, and so he sewed together bearskins to make himself clothing to protect himself and stayed behind.

The people who went to the warm land soon began to quarrel. The quarrel began with their new skill with the bow. They learned to fletch arrows with eagle feathers so they would fly straight and true. They came upon an eagle on their trip and began to divide the feathers. Some received many feathers, others only a few.

One of the men who had received only a few became angry and left the company to find his own place in the warmer land, saying that he would never again speak to his old comrades. Members of this smaller group then began to speak in a different language, and this happened again and again. And that is why other people speak in different languages today.

The Manchu people have always felt themselves to be distinct from the Chinese. Although they are clearly now very sinicized, they have told stories about the Chinese from earliest times. These were common even when the Manchu ruled all of China. A number of these attribute Manchu origin to Chinese customs. One of China’s most famous customs is given such an origin in the Manchu tale of the woman with the huge feet.