Seven Fairies

In Chinese folklore and mythology, the Seven Fairies are the seven daughters of Jade Emperor and Queen Mother of the West. In modern times, the Seven Fairies are best known for their parts in the Dong Yong and the Seventh Fairy legend. "The Bird Maidens" "The Bird Maidens", a tale from the fourth-century collection In Search of the Supernatural (which contains a different tale for Dong Yong), mentions a man in Xinyu (in Jiangxi Province) discovering "six or seven young maidens in a field, all wearing wonderful feather garments". He marries one of the girls after stealing her feathered robe so that she can't fly off, but one day she finds her robe and flies away. She later returns and flies off with their three daughters. A similar record is found in Guo Pu's Mythical Tales from the same period. This "quasi-Swan Maiden" story was possibly told to explain why some large birds carried off children. Today, Xinyu has a reservoir and tourist resort named Fairy Lake which claims to be "the hometown of the legend of the Seven Fairies of China".