[2] It is one of the oldest known variants of Cinderella,[3][4] first published in the Tang dynasty compilation Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written around 850 by Duan Chengshi.
[6] Long before the Qin and Han dynasty, in a village located somewhere in the southern area, their chief by the name of Wu had two wives by custom and a daughter by each of them.
Ye Xian is Wu's daughter of one wife, and she is extremely beautiful, kind and gentle, and gifted in many skills such as pottery and poetry.
With her family reduced to poverty, Ye Xian is forced to become a lowly servant and work for her unloving and cruel stepmother, Jin, and spoiled and lazy younger half-sister Jun-Li.
Despite living a life burdened with chores and housework and suffering endless abuse at her stepmother's hands, she finds solace when she ends up befriending a beautiful, 10 foot (3.0 m) fish in the lake near her home, with golden eyes and scales.
The cruel Jin tricks Ye Xian into giving her the tattered dress she wears, and by this, catches and kills the fish and serves it for dinner for herself and Jun-Li.
She makes a silent wish to the bones, and Ye Xian finds herself clothed magnificently in a gown of sea-green silk, a cloak of kingfisher feathers, and a pair of tiny golden slippers.
She is admired by everyone, in particular the young men who believe her to be a princess and enjoys herself until she hears Jun-Li call out to the crowd, "That girl looks like my older sister!"
The golden slipper is found by a local peasant who trades it, and it is passed on to various people until it reaches the hands of the nearby king of the To'Han islets, a powerful kingdom covering thousands of small islands.
The stepmother forces Jun-Li, who has lost all hope of marrying rich, into the same state of servitude that Ye Xian suffered for so many years.
When Jun-Li promptly and bitterly rebels against her lot, it starts a violent quarrel, the result of which is a cave-in that buries both women and destroys their home.
[14] In both Eberhard's and Ting's indexes, Chinese variants of Cinderella can segue into the heroine being drowned and going through a cycle of transformations (from bird to bamboo).