Rice-bowl Wishes

An old lady named Nii Yoo adopts three eleven-year-old orphans: Lan Dua, Swa Jow, and Gow Sir. She dresses Lan Dua and Swa Jow in fine clothes and sends them to school, but treats Gow Sir, who is blind, like a servant — dressing him in rags and having him do chores instead of studying. One night, a fire breaks out in the house. Gow Sir senses the heat first and raises the alarm, saving Lan Dua and Swa Jow, then guides the helpless old lady to safety himself, asking her to let his ears be her eyes.

Grateful and dying, Lady Nii Yoo tells Gow Sir he is the brave, unselfish boy she has been searching for, and gives him a magic rice bowl that can grant one wish a year, two every other year, or three every three years — but warns that if it is ever broken, everything it has granted will be lost. Gow Sir's first wish, made only after burying her, is simply to see. His sight is instantly restored. When Lan Dua and Swa Jow learn of the rice bowl, they insist on sharing its wishes too. Their wishes are for wealth and effortless success — a house full of food, high grades without studying — while Gow Sir's further wishes are for a library of books and time to read and learn.

Over the following years, Lan Dua and Swa Jow's wishes bring them ever grander houses, chests of gold, beautiful wives, and titles as the most successful governor and merchant in the village — all without effort. Gow Sir, meanwhile, keeps working, studying, and teaching, wishing only for more books, and eventually becomes a teacher himself. When the two brothers become greedy and fight over who should keep the rice bowl for themselves alone, it falls to the floor and shatters into pieces.

Everything the bowl had ever granted vanishes at once — Gow Sir's eyesight and his books disappear, while Lan Dua and Swa Jow discover their mansions, gold, wives, and children are all gone too, along with their titles and even their ability to read, write, or do simple arithmetic. Confused that Gow Sir has lost his eyesight and his books yet kept his teaching job, they visit him to ask how. Gow Sir explains that whatever the bowl gave him was the bowl's to take back — but the knowledge he gained through his own effort, and the love of the wife he found for himself rather than wished for, could never be taken away, because he had earned them himself.

Ashamed and humbled, Lan Dua and Swa Jow return to school as its oldest but most dedicated students, having learned that life is what one chooses to make of it. Gow Sir goes on to become one of the wisest and most caring teachers in China, keeping on his desk, for the rest of his life, an ordinary rice bowl carefully glued back together from its broken pieces.