Dragons can be awkward neighbours, so when the Emperor of China saw a dragon settle into the cave at the top of the mountain behind his palace, he wasn’t pleased.
It was the biggest, scariest dragon he’d ever seen. It had seven heads, on seven snaky necks, attached to one thick green scaly body, and each individual head had ninety-nine sharp curved yellow teeth. (I’m sure you can work out how many teeth the dragon had altogether, but the Emperor didn’t bother doing the sums. He just knew it was far too many teeth.)
“I can’t have a dragon living above my palace!” he whined. “If it comes out of that cave, it might fly down here, frighten my party guests and set fire to my palace. It might even eat me!”
He summoned his wise men and his wise women, and he asked them, “How do we get rid of that dragon?”
The wise men and wise women frowned. “It’s not easy to get rid of a dragon, oh great Emperor, but we could make sure it doesn’t leave its cave, then it wouldn’t threaten your palace.”
“How would we do that?” demanded the Emperor.
“If we feed the dragon its favourite food at the mouth of the cave, then it won’t need to leave the cave.”
“Great idea,” said the Emperor. “What is its favourite food?”
The wise men and wise women looked a bit shifty and embarrassed, so the Emperor stamped his feet until they admitted that the long green seven-headed dragon’s favourite food was:
Little girls.
“Little girls?” said the Emperor. “Little girls? But I can’t feed little girls to the dragon! I don’t want to feed my own daughters to it, and I don’t want to feed the daughters of my cooks or soldiers or gardeners or civil servants to it either, because then they wouldn’t like me and they wouldn’t work for me.”
The wise men and wise women said, “There are lots of farmers, fishermen and merchants outside your palace who have daughters. You could feed their little girls to the dragon to keep it safely in the cave.”
So the Emperor demanded a silk bag filled with the names of all the families in China who didn’t work in his palace, and every Friday morning he picked out a name. Then a messenger on a fast horse rode to that family and announced in a loud shouty voice:
“By order of the Emperor, you must feed one of your little girls to the seven-headed dragon. But because the Emperor is kind and merciful, you may choose which of your daughters to give to the dragon.”
So each week, a family would take a little girl up the mountain. They would all walk up a steep winding path to the very top, where they would sit the little girl outside the cave, then bang a big brass gong put there by the Emperor’s servants. The booommmmm of the gong told the dragon that his tea was ready. Then the family would go away.
Leaving the little girl on the mountain to be eaten.
Over weeks and months and years, the steep path to the summit got wider, trodden down by the many feet which had climbed up and the fewer feet which had walked slowly and sadly back down.
But it worked! It worked perfectly, from the Emperor’s point of view, because the dragon stayed in the cave and didn’t bother him at all.
Then one Friday, the name he pulled out of the bag was Li, a rice farmer. So the messenger rode to Li’s rice farm and said in a bored voice:
“By order of the Emperor, you must feed one of your little girls to the seven-headed dragon. But because the Emperor is kind and merciful, you may choose which of your daughters to give to the dragon.”
Li looked at his three lovely daughters, with tears in his eyes.
His youngest daughter, whose name was Chi, thought this was a dreadful thing to ask any father to do, to choose one of his children to feed to a dragon.
So, to save her father from making such a terrible choice and to save her big sisters from the dragon, Chi said, “I will go. I will go and meet the dragon. But I would like to ask three favours of you, Father. I’d like to take the sword that hangs over the fireplace, I’d like you to give me seven barrels of your best sticky rice and I’d like to go up the mountain on my own.”
The next morning, Chi left the farm with a long sword in her belt, pulling behind her a cart loaded with seven barrels of sticky rice.
As she walked up the mountain on her own, she could smell the rice. Her father had cooked the sticky rice before he put it in the barrels, so as she pulled the cart, she was surrounded by the warm sweet toasty smell of cooked rice. She knew the rice in the barrels was gluey, gloopy and glutinous.
When she got to the top of the mountain, she placed the seven barrels of rice in a line at the mouth of the cave, hid herself and the cart behind the big gong, then banged the gong to tell the dragon his tea was ready.
The dragon’s heads came out of the cave.
Seven huge heads appeared out of the darkness, with ninety-nine sharp teeth in each head. Seven long necks followed, weaving and winding around each other, as the heavy body squatted in the cave.
Seven heads on seven necks, hunting for a meal.
Each head had to pass over a barrel of rice as it came out of the cave. And each head smelt the rice, the warm toasty sweet-scented sticky rice.
The dragon’s favourite food was little girl. However it had eaten nothing but little girls for years now. The dragon breathed in the fragrance of the rice and thought, “That smells good. I could have rice for starter and little girl for main course.”
So the seven heads dived… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… into the seven barrels of rice and started to eat.
As soon as all seven heads were in the seven barrels, Chi grasped the hilt of the sword and ran at the dragon.
The dragon heard her coming and the dragon attacked with its first three heads.
But the first, second and third heads were so deep in the barrels of sticky rice that they couldn’t get out. They were stuck in the barrels.
So Chi ran up to the first three heads and CHOP CHOP CHOP she cut them off.
The next three heads attacked.
The fourth, fifth and sixth heads hadn’t gone so deep into the rice, because they had started eating after the first three heads, so they managed to pull themselves out of the barrels of sticky rice and started chasing Chi around the mountain top.
But those three heads had eaten lots of rice, so when they tried to bite her with their ninety-nine teeth each, there was so much sticky rice on their teeth and gums that they couldn’t open their mouths. Their jaws were stuck together.
Chi realised they couldn’t bite her, so she whirled round and CHOP CHOP CHOP she cut off those three heads too.
But the seventh head had gone into the rice last, and by the time it had snaked into the seventh barrel, the dragon’s belly was almost full from the rice eaten by the other six heads.
The seventh head hadn’t gone very deep, so it pulled out of the barrel clean and fast. And the seventh head hadn’t eaten very much, so its teeth weren’t stuck together.
When the seventh head started to chase Chi, the seventh head opened its mouth wide and Chi saw the ninety-nine long yellow teeth.
So Chi ran away.
As she crouched behind the gong, she thought, “I had planned to fight a dragon with all its heads and teeth stuck in rice. I hadn’t planned to fight a dragon with ninety-nine teeth snapping at me!” And she looked at the path down the mountain.
Then she thought, “Hold on, I’ve just fought a seven-headed dragon. This is only a one-headed dragon!”
She leapt out from behind the gong. She jumped onto a barrel of rice. She waited until the dragon’s head snaked towards her.
And she sliced its head off.
Then Chi kicked the barrels down the mountain, to roll down the slope and thud into the back wall of the palace, and she kicked the dragon’s heads down the mountain, to bounce down the slope and squelch into the back wall of the palace.
Because she thought that since the Emperor had happily fed little girls to the dragon for so long, he should clear up the mess.