![[Reckoning]](reckoning.jpg)
7 Chinese Bros.
Five Chinese Brothers is a story about five
Chinese brothers who can each do one marvelous trick. One Chinese
brother can swallow the whole ocean and is persuaded to do so
by a young child wanting seashells. The brother makes the child
promise to return quickly and not go out of sight. The child
does not heed him, of course, and dies when the brother can hold
it in no longer. The brother is brought up on charges and sentenced
to death. They first try to hang him, but his brother with an
extendible neck replaces him and escapes injury. Then they try
to chop off his head, but his brother with an iron neck saves
him in the same manner as before. They try to burn him, but his
inflammable brother lives through the flames in his stead. They
finally put him in a closed space with marshmallows or something
to try to suffocate him, but the brother that can hold his breath
forever comes through that all right. The authorities give up
after that. [bragar] * The final Chinese Brother swallowed the ocean
in to try to save his brothers from the evil Emperor. [Ron Henry]
* There's a children's picture book roughly similar to the 5
Chinese Brothers story titled "Seven Chinese Brothers." In this story
the people of China are persecuted by the emperor of China, who
employs them in building the Great Wall (a reference to Shih
Huang-Ti?) and the seventh brother eventually drowns the emperor
by swallowing the sea and spitting it up on his palace. [remmie]
"Wrap your heel in bones of steel"
["Rap your heel"] means
to tap in time to music? [Ron
Henry] * [Perhaps] a reference to an
Achilles heel, i.e. wrap your Achilles heel in bones of steel,
so that it is no longer a weakness. [s2172268] * A possible reference to the ancient Chinese
practice of wrapping the feet of young women. [kieran]
"Autumn waited hold it to you in
the colored come another"
Autumn is the season when the leaves
change colors. [Chris Piuma]
"Seven thousand years the Communi
did reign"
["Communi" refers to]
Communists. [remmie]