Ye Xian, Chinese Cinderella At The Chinese New Year Spring Festival
February 12, is the celebration of the Chinese New Year Spring Festival . In ninth-century Chinese folklore, this is the festival where Ye Xian, the Chinese Cinderella, lost her slipper, and the rest is history. The Cinderella story is a tale of serendipity and love - both of which are universal themes. These themes are perhaps the reason why the story seems to transcend time itself and became one of the world’s go-to princess tales, recognized all over the world albeit under different names. While there are many variants of the story, they commonly feature a young woman in unjust and oppressive circumstances whose fortune is remarkably and unexpectedly changed with the assistance of divine elements such as magical animals and fairy godmothers (or godfathers). More than 500 versions of the same story have been found in Europe alone. The two most famous are the French version of Cinderella, by Charles Perrault (