Where The Mountain Meets The Moon

As Minli works to free Dragon from his ropes, he launches into his origin story.

Long ago, Painter Chen painted a picture of a dragon with ink from a special stone to give to Magistrate Tiger in exchange for lifting taxes on his village for one year. Painter Chen, feeling that Magistrate Tiger was a greedy and self-centered man, painted the dragon on the ground instead of in the sky in order to teach Magistrate Tiger a lesson: “‘Perhaps the magistrate will see how his wealth weighs him down” (52). Dragon could hear and feel everything that happened around him in those early days, though he couldn’t see, because Painter Chen purposefully left the dragon’s eyes white. When Magistrate Tiger noticed this, he added pupils with his own ink, but this caused the dragon to come to life. Dragon left the painting and, in a moment of chaos for the palace and town, escaped to the forest.

Dragon has lived alone in the forest his whole life and has never even had a name (up until now in the narrative, the author refers to him as “the dragon”). He suggests that Minli simply call him Dragon. Dragon wonders if he’s technically a real dragon, but Minli offers: “‘You feel real to me. So I think you’re a real dragon. Or, at least real enough” (59). They establish a friendship in light of their shared journey to Never-Ending Mountain.

Ma and Ba meet the goldfish man, whose tracks they’ve mistaken for Minli’s. They confront him about selling Minli a fish, and they report that she’s gone in search of Never-Ending Mountain—an impossible task. The goldfish man doesn’t see it as impossible, but rather takes Minli’s quest seriously. His faith in Minli embarrasses Ma and Ba: “Under his gaze, Ma and Ba suddenly felt like freshly peeled oranges” (61). The goldfish man explains his perspective with a story.

When the goldfish man was 18, his fortune-telling grandmother predicted he would die in his nineteenth year. There was only one way to change his fate. The young goldfish man followed his grandmother’s advice and brought wine and sweets to the Old Man of the Moon and watched, unnoticed, as the Old Man ate. Meanwhile, the boy read his name in the Book of Fortune next to the number 19, indicating his imminent death. He asked the man to change the entry, and the Old Man of the Moon—feeling indebted to the boy for having eaten all his food — agreed to change the “1” in “19” to a “9,” thereby extending the boy’s life to age 99. The Old Man of the Moon offers some advice: “You now have many more years of life. Live them well” (66).

The goldfish man applies his own story to Minli’s efforts, saying, “Even fates written in the Book of Fortune can be changed. How can anything be impossible?” (67). He then gifts Ma and Ba with a silver goldfish and offers that, even if Minli doesn’t return with the thing she’s seeking, at least she’ll return. Ma and Ba feel humbled.

Minli, tired and thirsty from the work of cutting Dragon’s ropes, rides atop Dragon’s back. Dragon is large, “as long as the street in front of Minli’s house” (70), so he has difficulty maneuvering between trees, and the ride for Minli is bumpy and uncomfortable. Dragon doesn’t know his age, but Minli thinks he must be close to 100 years old. She feels sympathy for Dragon for having lived such a long, lonely life on the ground and not in the sky with other dragons. Minli falls asleep the shrieking from the monkeys in the peach grove wakes her up. Dragon and Minli wonder how they’ll get through the peach grove safely under the threat of the aggressive monkeys.

According to Dragon, the greedy, petty monkeys who guard the peach grove fight over everything, even surplus food they cannot eat. Inspired by this information, Minli hatches a plan to trap them. She cooks a big pot of rice while the monkeys watch, and then she puts her fishing net tightly over the pot. She tells Dragon to pretend he’s sleeping, and when the monkeys think it's safe to approach, they come up and reach for the rice. When they try to take their hands back out through the net, their full hands are too fat and can’t fit. Refusing to let go of the rice, the monkeys are trapped in the net, and Minli and Dragon safely proceed through the peach grove.

Ma and Ba sleep through the day and debate whether to follow Minli or turn back toward home. Their silver goldfish speaks to Ba, encouraging him to tell his wife “The Story of the Paper of Happiness.”

There once lived a family that was perfectly happy, and no one argued, not even the pets. Magistrate Tiger, young and not yet a father, heard rumor of this family and sent emissaries to learn the secret of the family’s happiness. The grandfather of the family gladly answered the request, and the emissaries left the family’s village with a trunk to deliver to Magistrate Tiger that contained a paper with the secret of happiness. On their return journey, however, the trunk opened, and the paper blew away. Magistrate Tiger asked the closest witness to the paper what it said, but the witness, being from a poor village and never having learned to read, could only report that he’d seen a single line on the paper, made up of a single repeated character. Magistrate Tiger grew angry and went with his army to destroy the family, but when he arrived, he only found an empty field.

Ba interprets this story in relation to his daughter: “‘I think Minli, like the secret word and the paper of happiness,’ Ba said, ‘is not meant to be found,’” (87). Ma silently agrees to go home.