The people inside the house mistook his tiny head for that of a rooster and smashed it with a heavy iron pot, and so he died, through no fault of his own.

But the feet of the young wife became so much the envy of all who heard of them that since that time, the Chinese too have bound women’s feet to make them smaller than normal. The religion of the earlier Manchu is difficult to reconstruct, but some features are demonstrated in their tales. The Manchu shared with virtually all the northern or Siberian peoples a belief in shamans and in the curative effect of certain herbs. Medicine and religion were not distinct areas.

Many Manchu tales tell of the power of the ginseng root, a very important medicine in Manchurian society famed as a curative, an aphrodisiac, and much else. One of the finest folktales suggests that ginseng possesses the power to make humans immortal. The search for immortality is a common theme in Chinese literature and is strongly informed by Taoism. It does not seem to have been as common in Manchurian tales, and this might be considered a condemnation of Korean or Chinese tales containing such a theme.

Ginseng is also commonly portrayed as having the ability to change shape in Manchurian and Korean folktales; often, it appears as a little boy with a red vest or a girl with a red flower in her hair. The vest is also a part of Manchurian life, as little boys and girls are given such articles of clothing after their first few months of life. Red is the color of happiness in all of China, but it also is effective in warding off evil, especially in Manchuria. The changing of the ginseng root into a human is a very common theme in the folklore of the region, perhaps inspired by the somewhat human shape of the root itself. Tales and legends of this type are so common that volumes are devoted to ginseng stories alone.

One of these, the Changbai-shan Rensen Gushi (Ginseng tales from the Long White Mountains), published in Shenyang in 1980, is the source for the following tale.

Little Mushroom

One day a Manchu man and Manchu woman had a child, a lovely happy child whom they named Little Mushroom.