Soon after the gifted child Bukuri Yong-shon was born, the Heavenly Maiden waved good-bye and ascended to heaven.

The term Manchurian is difficult to define. It refers to the roughly four million people who inhabit traditional Manchuria– a land generally thought to include modern Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces in China, parts of Inner Mongolia, areas near the Korean border, and some eastern portions of what was the Soviet Union. Manchuria is popularly known as the land between the Long White Mountains (Changbai-shan) and the Black Water of the Japan Sea.

Manchurian is a relatively new name for the people apparently originally called the Juchen. The name Manchu was given them by the founder of the Ch’ing or Manchu dynasty. The Manchu dynasty was the last dynasty in China, and its last ruler was the Last Emperor, or “the last of the Manchu.” The Manchurians are traditionally thought of as coming from the Long White Mountains, a locale that figures prominently in their tales.

The Manchu language, altogether different from and unrelated to Chinese, is an Altaic language; sadly, it is very nearly (if not yet completely) extinct. With the loss of the language there is naturally a concomitant loss in the oral transmission of tales, but a significant number have been preserved by effective collecting among the Manchu and the Mongolians.