Number Ten Ox, the narrator, is dispatched to find a wise man who can cure the children. In the beginning of the novel, the village of Ku-fu is stricken by a plague which kills its silkworms and sends its children between the ages of eight and thirteen into a coma. The real story of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl is referenced at the end of the book. It draws on and reinvents the traditional tale of The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl and other myths, poems and incidents from Chinese history. The book is set in a fantastical version of imperial China (Hughart subtitled it "A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was"). Without mentioning names, the Taoists could use real emperors and real power structure in a fantasy form." Plot Confucians liked to castrate people who fought the establishment. Hughart called the novel "a modern version of a classical form of Chinese novel, which was an underground Taoist form designed to fight back against Confucians. The original draft of Bridge of Birds is included in a special slipcased version of the omnibus collection, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, released by Subterranean Press in 2008. It is the first of three novels in The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox series. Bridge of Birds is a fantasy novel by Barry Hughart, first published in 1984.
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