Supernatural Children:
Legends of Child Death and Familial Healing in Hospice Care
Abstract: This study examines legends of child death and familial healing within hospice care settings, focusing on the legends of "Supernatural Children." Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach encompassing folkloristics, anthropology, and health humanities, it explores the cultural narratives and beliefs that emerge in response to child death in China. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted in a hospice care ward in Beijing, this research presents three oral narratives—legends of children with terminal illnesses who are perceived as supernatural beings returning to the divine realm after death. By conducting a comparative analysis of Eastern and Western motifs, the study reveals the universal healing power of such narratives, highlighting their cultural specificity while tracing similar themes in global literature. The findings show that, even in the extreme context of child death, narratives possess significant healing power, reframing early death as a transcendence rather than a loss, and offering emotional continuity to grieving families through a secularized, familial supernatural imagination.
Key Words: Healing Narratives, Child Death, Hospice Care, Supernatural Children, Health Humanities, China, Cross-Cultural Analysis
1
From Mourning to Meaning: The Birth of Child Death Legends in Hospice Care
In the development of modern biomedicine, death has gradually been medicalized (Dillon, 2013), becoming an issue to be solved and fought against. Death, however, is also deeply cultural (Tu, 2024). Furthermore, compared to the death of elderly individuals, the death of a child often has a greater emotional impact on family and friends. Consequently, the death of a child, layered with both the cultural dimensions of death itself and the profound significance of early passing, becomes an even deeper cultural issue. As a hospice care volunteer, I noticed that people often use specific narratives to cope with the trauma of a child's passing. This paper will begin by examining three legends from hospice care, treating them as cultural representations through which to explore broader cultural perspectives on life and death in the context of child death, as well as the role that these legends play in family healing.
This study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining folkloristics, anthropology, and health humanities. An innovative aspect of this research is the combination of medical anthropology's vivid field data with literary texts. This approach transcends the materiality of the text, advancing the mission from "world literature" to "global literature"—discovering and preserving non-Western works while addressing global health challenges in a realistic context. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews, I collected three child death legends from a Beijing hospice (Feb–Nov 2024). From these oral texts, I conducted a comparative study of Eastern and Western folk beliefs and literary texts, revealing the universal healing role of narratives in coping with child death through the analysis of global motifs. Motif studies provide significant insights into global literature. Propp (1968) argued that the fundamental issue in studying tales, including legends, is understanding why similar tales exist worldwide. Only by recognizing these "similarities" can we identify true "uniqueness" and discover "differences" by first seeing "stability." These similarities and stable elements can be identified through morphological studies, with motif analysis being a crucial method.
Legends are a crucial genre of folk narratives, and their spread often follows certain patterns. Specific legends tend to expand in a ripple-like way based on local cultural identities, forming "legend circles" (Chen, 2013). Below, I will briefly outline the three legends discussed in this study to provide an overview of their structure. These narratives are flexible in their retelling and evoke resonance and genuine conviction within those in the hospice care field, fitting the nature of legends:
The Legend of Ranran: Ranran, a ten-year-old boy with a brain tumor, spent his final days in hospice care after treatment options were exhausted. His family, in deep despair, sought solace in Christianity. During a moment of lucidity, Ranran told his mother that he dreamt of himself as a superhero who could fly in the sky. He said that the Lord had sent him to Earth to save humanity, and that, to repay the kindness from his past life, he was born to his mother. Now that his mission was complete, it was time for him to leave. During the tomb ritual, Ranran's mother witnessed thousands of magpies circling around her, which she believed was Ranran returning to visit her. This strengthened her conviction that the Lord had taken Ranran to a better place.
The Legend of Xiaoyu: Xiaoyu, suffered from rhabdomyosarcoma, which spread extensively over three years. On the recommendation of his primary physician, his mother transferred Xiaoyu to a hospice care ward, but both were still hoping for an active treatment option and struggled to accept the impending end. As Xiaoyu's condition worsened, the hospice social worker discussed funeral arrangements with the family and introduced Buddhist concepts such as "reincarnation" and the "Pure Land." Though new to them, mother and son embraced these ideas. In his final moments, Xiaoyu called his mother to his bedside, saying, "Come here, I'm going to transform." His mother, recalling a pregnancy dream of a wounded roc bird, believed Xiaoyu’s life was destined for healing and connection, with his spirit now residing in the Pure Land as a bodhisattva. Xiaoyu passed away at 22.
The Legend of Guoguo: Guoguo, a girl with cervical cancer, progressing to the terminal stage in just one year. Her parents, wishing to alleviate her pain as much as possible during her final days, brought her to a hospice care ward. Guoguo was resilient, never backing down in the face of her illness, and continued to believe she could undergo further cancer treatment. As her condition rapidly declined, her mother decided to reveal the truth to her through a dream. During her pregnancy, her mother had dreamt of a colorful phoenix accompanied by two rows of eagles escorting it. In the dream, Guoguo was that phoenix. Guoguo, born with an extraordinary destiny, was believed to be a celestial spirit who had descended to endure trials, and her time on Earth—sixteen years—had now come to an end.
2
The Making of "Supernatural Children":
Variants, Archetypes, Motifs, and Cross-Cultural Interpretations
The above legends exhibit similar morphological features, which could be regarded as broad variants of the same genre—"A child, diagnosed with a terminal illness, is transferred to a hospice care ward after unsuccessful treatment. During the child's end-of-life journey, their identity gradually reveals supernatural qualities. The mother believes that, after death, the child transforms into another form and returns to the divine realm."
This legend carries a certain typological significance. In reviewing the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index), I found no exact match for this type of tale; the closest was found in localized classification research in China. In the book Chinese Folktale Types, under the theme "10. Underworld and Reincarnation," there is a motif titled "146. Repayment of a Past Debt," where a child is born into the household of a former creditor and repays the debt through labor or other means (Eberhard, 2017, p. 206). This motif has intrinsic religious undertones, reflecting the Buddhist concept of karmic retribution. Moreover, the three legends incorporate elements of miracle, transformation, and incarnation tales, making them composite in nature. To ensure deeper engagement with the original field data, I have chosen to treat the legends of Ranran, Xiaoyu, and Guoguo as a distinct genre.
To collect variants, it is first necessary to introduce the concept of a "signature motif," which determines which texts can be classified as variants of the three core legends. In this case, the defining motif is "a child returning to the divine realm after death." The following discussion examines legends with this motif, treating them as variants of the field legends, and collectively refers to them as "Supernatural Children." Here, "supernatural" specifically denotes the transformation between human and divine states, as well as spiritual transcendence at death. Such tales are recurring themes in folk beliefs, contemporary Chinese literature, and classical Chinese novels.
In Chinese folklore, early-deceased children are believed to have "Tongzi (童子) Fate." The term "Tongzi" refers to celestial children from the Heavenly Emperor's court, either banished or voluntarily descending to the human world as someone's child. These children are often marked by hardships, the most severe being an untimely recall to the divine realm—an early death. Their lifespans are typically short, with critical junctures at ages one, three, six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, forty-eight, and fifty-three. Even if they surpass these milestones, they are often left with some form of disability. According to folk beliefs, "Tongzi Fate" can affect both boys and girls (though typically boys), leading to mysterious illnesses, difficulties in romantic relationships, late marriages, or frequent misfortunes around engagements and weddings. Because of these implications, it is often necessary to determine whether someone has "Tongzi Fate" (Luo, 2018). This belief has been projected into both contemporary and classical Chinese literary works.
In Niuniu: A Father's Notes (妞妞：一個父親的札記, 2018), a contemporary Chinese literary work, author Zhou Guoping shares his experience of losing his daughter Niuniu, who died 562 days after birth due to a malignant retinal tumor (Zhou, 2018, p. 39). During her pregnancy, Niuniu's mother dreamt of a pure white bird resting on her palm (Zhou, 2018, p. 4). Later, as Niuniu suffered from her illness, she told Niuniu a story portraying her as a divine gift reclaimed by the gods as punishment (Zhou, 2018, p. 97). After Niuniu’s death, she was seen as "an angel returning to God" or "a celestial maiden returning to Guanyin" (Zhou, 2018, p. 275). The book provides a detailed depiction of the parents' emotions and thoughts from their perspective, showing notable parallels with the three legends.
By examining ancient texts (Suiyan Daoren, 2013; Xu, 2002), I discovered several legends of "Divine Children" that are analogous with "Supernatural Children" in Chinese literature. Two of the most representative examples are the stories of Nezha (哪吒) and Han Xiangzi (韓湘子). These stories typically begin by explaining that the child was originally a deity from the heavens who descended to the mortal realm for a specific reason. In addition, these narratives are closely related to the myth of miraculous conception. Unlike the indigenous Chinese versions of such myths, which traditionally do not include the mother's dreams, these stories incorporate a new element—the mother’s pregnancy dream (Sun, 2016). This influence can be traced back to the Buddhist tale of Siddhartha Gautama, where a six-tusked white elephant enters his mother’s womb in a dream, a motif that became prominent in Han Chinese Buddhist texts, particularly in medieval Chinese translations of the Buddha's biographies (Lin, 2017). These stories sank into the folk traditions, merging with indigenous miraculous conception myths, creating a powerful narrative force in Chinese folklore. Although most legends of "Divine Children" center around mystical cultivation rather than illness, they can be considered archetypes for the "Supernatural Children" narratives in hospice care contexts.
Most of the children who descend from the heavenly court are destined for an early death. Their reincarnation is merely to endure trials, which are brief, and after completing their cultivation, they must promptly return to the heavenly realm. For instance, before descending to the mortal world, the White Crane Boy's earthly lifespan was predetermined to be sixteen years (Suiyan Daoren, 2013, Chapter 2). Therefore, this early death has a dual interpretation—seen as a tragedy or taboo from the perspective of ordinary people, but from the child's own perspective, death signifies achieving immortality and spiritual fulfillment. There are exceptions, however: some of these "Divine Children" are tempted by the allure of earthly pleasures, risking being trapped in the cycle of reincarnation and losing all their merit. In such cases, longevity becomes a personal tragedy, defying conventional views. This theme is also present in classical Chinese literature. For example, in the story of Lü Dongbin (呂洞賓), it is said: "If I do not rescue him now, he may fall into the cycle of reincarnation" (Deng, 1994, Chapter 1). Similarly, Han Yu's (韓愈) tale reads: "Han Yu is nearly forty and still has not awakened. If he continues down this destructive path, indulging in earthly splendor, there will be no chance of salvation" (Suiyan Daoren, 2013, Chapter 2).
Clearly, Chinese literature has long been inclined towards deifying mortals. Whether these divine beings choose to return promptly to heaven (i.e., die early), childhood is often emphasized as the period of divine transformation to create a sense of contrast and destiny. As a result, the image of the divine child has remained prominent in both classical novels and folklore. In ancient times, such divine legends often served as tools for ambitious individuals to deify themselves for political purposes, or were constructed by the masses to express respect for significant historical figures[1]. In contemporary medical contexts, however, these "Divine Children" legends are no longer framed by grand political or historical narratives; rather, they have been recast as the "Supernatural Children" legends, focusing on the daily lives and illness experiences of families with terminally ill children. The supernatural emplotment (Good, 1994) within these stories has thus shifted—from the rationalization of heroic figures by the community to the rationalization of child death by grieving parents.
Based on the variants and archetypes of the "Supernatural Children," I identified five "key motifs," representing the narrative units present or implied in all versions. When different motifs are combined in a specific order, they form a complete tale type (Thompson, 1955, p. 415). The following sections will describe and interpret these motifs, drawing on the children's death legends I collected from the hospice care ward, while also incorporating relevant literary works from both Eastern and Western traditions. Cross-cultural comparisons reveal that the motif chain of the "Supernatural Children" legend contains numerous global motifs:
2.1 The child originates from the divine realm, a process typically revealed through the mother's dream during pregnancy Xiaoyu's mother had a mysterious dream during her pregnancy: "I was on an endless sea, and a great roc flew toward me. When I looked closely, I saw one of its feet was injured. Then I woke up." Later, Xiaoyu developed rhabdomyosarcoma and had his right leg amputated. Xiaoyu's mother believed the dream foreshadowed this—the roc came to heal and would leave once recovered. She excitedly said, "My son was originally a roc, a powerful figure. He only came here to resolve some of his small issues and to form a bond with me." "Supernatural Children" legends often link divine descent to a woman's pregnancy, emphasizing the child's extraordinary origin. In classical tales, boys are often White Crane incarnations, while girls are phoenixes. For instance, in Feijian Ji (飛劍記, The Story of the Flying Sword, 1994), Lü Dongbin's birth is described: "A white crane descended from the sky and flew into the tent. Shortly after, Lady Wang felt pain and gave birth to a son" (Deng, 1994, Chapter 1). Similarly, in Xihu Erji (西湖二集, The Second Collection of West Lake Tales, 1994), Li Fengniang (李鳳娘, Phoenix Lady) is depicted as a black phoenix descending to Earth: "At Fengniang's birth, a black phoenix flew down, landing in front of Li Dao's camp. After the phoenix flew away, Lady Fengniang was born, hence her name" (Zhou, 1994, Chapter 5). The connection between human families and the divine realm is often established through the intentional interpretation of dreams. Dreams, with their mysterious and ethereal nature, serve as a medium linking the mortal and divine worlds. Notably, in these dreams, the child's soul often appears in bird form: Ranran as a flying superhero (a bird-like variant), Xiaoyu as a great roc, Guoguo as a colorful phoenix, and Niuniu as a pure white bird. Such child-bird relations are not unique to China. For instance, angels are often portrayed as winged children, and in Slovene folklore, the souls of children are said to manifest as little birds (Copeland, 1931). While the association between birds and children is culturally universal, the specific types of birds carry distinct local significance. Their selection is shaped by cultural knowledge and varies widely across regions. In Western narratives, owls and doves are common, whereas in China, cranes, sparrows, and pheasants frequently appear, often with inherent hierarchical distinctions. For instance, in Dong Du Ji (東度記, The Record of Eastern Crossing, 2013), the official in charge of reincarnation opens the Ledger of Good and Evil and finds that Bu Gongping (卜公平) was harsh, while Bu Yufu (卜漁父) kind-hearted. As a result, Bu Gongping’s family is assigned a pheasant, a grounded and ordinary creature, while Bu Yufu’s receives a white crane—an immortal bird that comes from heaven and symbolizes longevity (Qingxi Daoren, 2013, Chapter 2). This distinction suggests that parental virtue influences the type of bird granted by divine judgment. In my fieldwork, the birds that appeared included the roc and phoenix, each carrying deep symbolic meaning. In Zhuangzi (莊子), the roc transforms from a giant fish, representing limitless metamorphosis, cosmic vastness, and divine power, soaring "three thousand miles through the water and ninety thousand miles on the wind" (Fang, 2010, Chapter 1). The phoenix, by contrast, embodies rebirth after death and transcendence beyond mortality. Thus, the "Supernatural Children" legends employ specific birds to symbolize positive aspects of life and death, retrospectively offering parents a solace for the early loss of their child.
2.2 The child displays distinctive features or behaviors that set them apart Guoguo, though only 16 years old, was remarkably talented and virtuous. At her memorial service, Guoguo's mother recounted her short yet brilliant life, with her awards physically displayed across three tables. Her mother often told her she did not need to always be first, but Guoguo enjoyed studying and succeeded effortlessly. In an essay, Guoguo imagined herself traveling to the Warring States period, standing by Qu Yuan (屈原) at the Miluo River. She tried to dissuade Qu Yuan from drowning himself, urging him to seek another virtuous ruler. Qu Yuan, however, replied, "I have spent my life serving my country, and for once, I wish to be selfish," before leaping into the river. In this narrative, Guoguo’s own life and death became intertwined with Qu Yuan’s—living as a duty to the world, dying as a fulfillment of the self. Hospice volunteers, upon reading her essay, believed she must have descended to complete an unknown mission before returning to the divine realm.
2.3 Due to certain causes, the child experiences illness or other forms of suffering at an early age Illness and suffering are central to the legends of Ranran, Xiaoyu, and Guoguo, all of whom suffered from terminal illnesses, as well as to the Tongzi who often faces mysterious ailments. However, in the "Supernatural Children" legends , illness is more than a mere physical condition—it is deeply intertwined with spiritual forces. Because of their youth and supernatural identity, these children are particularly vulnerable to otherworldly threats. In Chinese folk beliefs, a child’s illness is sometimes attributed to their soul wandering away, reflecting the idea that young children possess weaker vital energy (氣禀) and are thus more susceptible to interference from wandering spirits (Luan, 2017). Within this framework, a supernatural child's illness becomes not just a medical affliction but an externalization of spiritual disturbance. While biomedical explanations exist, people simultaneously construct narratives that assign supernatural or moral significance to the illness, creating a dialogic space and shaping a polyphonic narrative. For example, after Xiaoyu was admitted to hospice care, a social worker introduced Buddhist concepts of illness and treatment to Xiaoyu and his mother: "Your illness stems from the karma of those you harmed in the past, and now they are hurting you. We need to end this cycle by helping them find peace, which will also lead you to the Pure Land, free from suffering and reincarnation. There, you can become a Bodhisattva and continue to bless your family." From a global perspective, common explanations for early death include parental or child fate: "God has given it and God has taken it away" (Sedakova, 2020); punishment for mistakes made during pregnancy (Simpson, 2000); or attacks by demons. For example, in Roman folklore, there is a demonic bird similar to the "Guhuo Bird" (姑獲鳥) in Chinese folklore—both resemble birds with human-like breasts that can steal and harm children (Frazer, 1951; Mei, 1834).
2.4 The child, deeply tormented, increasingly shows an anticipation for the afterlife After prolonged surgery and chemotherapy, Xiaoyu's health severely deteriorated. Upon entering hospice care, he still sought aggressive cancer treatment, often telling doctors, "I want to keep living," which left the medical staff feeling powerless. The doctor explained that continuing treatment would bring significant pain, but Xiaoyu's determination remained strong: "If I don't try, isn't that losing hope?" However, after hearing the story of the great roc and Bodhisattva transformation, Xiaoyu expressed a change: "I don't want to endure this suffering anymore." Two days before his death, he asked to have all his IV lines removed, saying, "I want to go." After receiving an increased dose of morphine, he slipped into a deep sleep. In his final moments, he told his mother, "Mom, come here. I am going to transform," a statement of hopeful anticipation reminiscent of the American ballad: "An' I wondered, wondered, mother, /Who had called and I must go" (Bluegrass Lyrics, n.d.). Parents who bring their children to hospice care often face social stigma, accused of irresponsibly abandoning their child. However, from the perspective of the child's lived experience, even those who once clung strongly to life eventually reach a point where they express a desire "to leave sooner." This shift reflects the reality that the modern hospital often delivers damaging medical treatment rather than true healing and well-being (Thornber, 2020). In fact, death and healing are not mutually exclusive. Parents and children have always sought healing, especially if we view these legends as a cultural substitute for medical treatments. Before the introduction of these legends, terminally ill children implicitly resisted hearing bad news about their condition, leading families and medical staff to adopt a strategy of withholding information out of consideration for the child's emotional needs. This often resulted in the persistence of aggressive and sometimes harmful treatment plans. However, the "Supernatural Children" legends offered a sense of afterlife, helping children release their attachment to the present and rekindle a hopeful outlook on life and death. These legends assist terminally ill children in accepting death and seeing its value. This inner shift allows external measures like prognosis disclosure and palliative care to proceed more effectively. In essence, the creation and spread of these legends mark a turning point in communication, helping families and children face early death more positively.
3
Between Suffering and Healing: The Immortality of the Soul and Family Love
The task in pediatric palliative care is to help the child and their loved ones find their way as far as they can along this continuum from suffering to healing (Liben, Papadatou, & Wolfe, 2008), where storytelling can potentially play a meaningful role. The preceding sections established and interpreted the "Supernatural Children" legend genre. Building on this foundation, I now focus on the secularized and familial forms of supernatural imagination underlying these legends. These narratives, though set in the extreme context of child death, hold significant healing potential. This is because healing, unlike curing, originates from within the individual, fostering a sense of wholeness even in the presence of persistent disease, rather than relying solely on external actions to eliminate disease. While curing is often integral to healing, healing can occur independently of curing (Kearney, 2000). This discussion helps us understand the universal relationship between narrative, caregiving, and healing.
3.1 The Narrative Motivation of Child Death: "Why Do Children Die? Why Did My Child Die?"
To explore the healing role of narrative, we must first understand the wound and rupture that it seeks to address. Why do people create similar legends around child death? In Niuniu, the father asks, "Can anyone tell me why the world and I still exist, but you do not?" (Zhou, 2018, p. 276). This question embodies a fundamental human response to bereavement: the need for an explanation, particularly in tragic and unnatural circumstances like the death of a young child (Avery & Reynolds, 2016). In other words, "Supernatural Children" is a death narrative generated through the emplotment of a child's illness and end-of-life experience, driven by the core question: "Why do children die?"—or more specifically, "Why did my child die?" These narratives serve two purposes: to counter the cultural taboo of early death and to cope with personal and familial grief.
The child tales I collected in hospice care differ markedly from those about elderly patients. For elderly individuals, families and caregivers often face death with less emotional distress (World Health Organization, 2018), focusing their storytelling on organizing and summarizing the events of the current life. In contrast, when a child dies, families and hospice workers shift their attention to both past and future lives, co-creating a legend genre to soothe the trauma. If "death" is seen as a potential narrative gap, this gap holds particular significance in children's stories, while for elderly patients, death is often perceived as a natural conclusion. Narrative gaps can be categorized into "logical" and "emotional" gaps: "If a group believes a narrative fails to meet their emotional needs, we can consider this an emotional gap" (Shi, 2021, p. 112). Shi further noted that such gaps create "tension," which propels the narrative toward a sense of fulfillment by bridging those gaps (Shi, 2021, p. 109). From this perspective, death creates an emotional gap in the narratives of children, while it does not usually do so in those of elderly individuals. Thus, under the influence of this tension, the two narratives conclude with different motifs: children's legends extend from a past life to the afterlife, closing in the divine realm, while elderly narratives conclude within the current human experience.
3.2 Themes in Child Death Narratives: Xianglin Sao's Three Questions
In Chinese culture, longevity is seen as key to a "good death", making early death a taboo (Chen, 2020). The fundamental reason why the death of a child is so difficult to bear lies in the inherent temporal tension it presents. One expression of this is seen in the way hospice volunteers discuss children nearing death, often accompanied by an anxious sense of time—"I hold his hand tightly, like holding an hourglass," "He reaches out his hand to interlock fingers with mine; I really want to hold on to him, to keep him here." Thus, the core of the "Supernatural Children" legend lies in mitigating this temporal tension through the theme of "the soul's immortality," extending the short lives of children to past and future realms. This belief aligns closely with religious conceptions of the afterlife, sharing inherent compatibility with many religious doctrines. Therefore, "the soul's immortality," combined with religious visions of the afterlife, counteracts the finality of death, transforming early death into an opportunity to transcend to a higher level of existence.
Interestingly, Ranran's family, despite being Christian, omitted references to sin and instead emphasized the idea of "coming to repay a kindness," a perspective that diverges from mainstream Christian doctrine. Ranran's narrative closely parallels Xiaoyu's story within a Buddhist context that highlights the concept of karmic retribution, illustrating how local beliefs can reshape and reinterpret imported religious frameworks. But why do narratives of child death adapt traditional religious doctrines? In Buddhism, time is seen as continuous and cyclical—souls repeatedly meet across lifetimes through karmic connections[2]. In contrast, Christianity envisions a linear timeline, where each soul is unique and untethered to past lives. Consequently, the Buddhist concept appears more suitable for the cultural mindset of terminally ill children's families, as grieving parents yearn not only for an extension of life but also for a continuation of emotional bonds. This reflects Ranran's family's ambivalence towards death—wanting to transcend it through Christian faith, yet unwilling to relinquish earthly attachment. In this sense, Buddhist elements further extend the traditional concept of "the soul's immortality," revealing that the temporal tension in child death is fundamentally a quest for the continuity of family love. This explains Ranran's reincarnation to repay his parents and Xiaoyu's continued care for his loved ones as a Bodhisattva.
However, the "soul" in these narratives is not solely reliant on religious belief. In post-Mao China, religious activities have been heavily restricted due to specific policy contexts (Cho, 2023). As a result, mainstream views on life and death are largely atheistic. For terminally ill patients, however, religious visions of the afterlife become an important resource to cope with death, leading to the phenomenon of "religious conversion" (Li, 2007) in hospice settings. In Chinese hospice care, religious elements appear sporadically, often in secularized forms to avoid policy restrictions. Religion, therefore, becomes fragmented and functional—more practical knowledge than a systematic theology—helping patients confront death. So, what is the true essence of those "souls" that transcend time and mortality in the "Supernatural Children" legends, as understood by families of terminally ill children? Guoguo's mother expressed, "My child's body may remain in the material world forever, but our love transcends everything. I believe in reincarnation, and if fate allows, we will meet again." This suggests that, although the "Supernatural Children" legends are laden with supernatural and religious overtones, their core emotions reflect a more secular and familial expression of love, rather than an attempt to deal with life and death through orthodox theology or cultural myths. This familial supernatural imagination especially highlights the importance of emotional connection, particularly from the mother's perspective.
To better understand this issue, I will use "Xianglin Sao's Three Questions" to summarize the core themes of child death legends and the familial supernatural imagination they contain. Xianglin Sao (祥林嫂), as portrayed in Lu Xun's Blessing (祝福), is an iconic figure in modern Chinese literature. After her child is taken by wolves, she repeatedly recounts the story of her child's death to neighbors, to the point where the entire town grows weary and dismissive of her grief. Eventually, she stops speaking, though her sorrow only deepens. Shortly before her death, she wanders the streets in a daze, finally asking the story's protagonist three questions: "Is there truly a soul after death?" "If so, does that mean there is a hell?" "Does it mean that a dead family can meet again?" (Lu, 2018, Chapter 1). These questions build upon each other: if there is a soul, then hell must exist, and if hell is a shared destination, family reunion becomes possible. The final question is the most crucial, mirroring what Niuniu's father said: "Perhaps time has only one use: to help me—not to forget, but to help me draw closer to you day by day" (Zhou, 2018, p. 277). Behind Xianglin Sao's questions lies the dual hope, which corresponds to the two themes previously discussed, shared by grieving mothers: first, that the soul is immortal, and second, that she and her child can be reunited through love. Thus, the dual meaning of life lies in both the self and relationships, with death's cruelty being its rupture of these meanings. In response to child death, people turn to legends as a means of bridging the gaps left by mortality—emphasizing "the soul's immortality" to combat the death of the self and "eternal family love" to counter the death of emotional connections, placing particular emphasis on preserving relational continuity. Through narrative approaches, wounded families find an effective way to relieve suffering, restore a sense of wholeness and well-being, and, in other words, achieve healing.
Tragically, Xianglin Sao's questions received ambiguous answers. On the vast, indifferent earth, Xianglin Sao and her story drifted unnoticed, suspended in the void. She could not imagine a reunion that transcended life and death, could not even envision the hope of heaven—she could only dare to wish for the existence of hell. Her grief, echoing in a space without empathetic listeners, remained unhealed, as the potential of narrative therapy was never realized. But fortunately, today, Xianglin Sao's three questions have found rich responses, both in reality and in literature. In the hospice setting, the process of creating and sharing the legends of "Supernatural Children" has provided substantial comfort to grieving mothers. When we compare the mothers in these hospice legends with Lu Xun's portrayal of Xianglin Sao, we see how profoundly powerful the acts of storytelling and empathetic listening can be. More stories need to be told, to be heard, to be healed.
Footnotes
[1] It is worth noting that in early Chinese folk culture, there might also have been child legends related to death narratives. However, due to the greater likelihood of political and historical texts being recorded and preserved, these legends may not have been fully documented. While this possibility should be acknowledged, it falls outside the scope of this discussion.
[2] In my fieldwork on hospice care, I found that those facing death generally adhere to the Buddhist belief in time as continuous and cyclical. However, the concept of time in Buddhism varies across different schools of thought. For instance, in Mahayana Buddhism, the cycle of birth and death for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas is distinct from that of ordinary beings. While ordinary beings are reborn according to the effects of their karma, experiencing a "discrete cycle of birth and death," where the subject of the cycle constantly changes, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas undergo a "transformational cycle of life and death" through their "emanation bodies," with the subject of the cycle remaining the same, symbolizing the eternal nature of Buddhist teachings.
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