tricks in public places or from door to door—anything, all things, Woo-Hsing could teach his dogs. This is why the children thought him a wonderful man.
It came time for Woo-Hsing's little boy to learn how to teach dogs. So one day he brought his son a very young one from the market place. Then he told him how the dog should be taught. It would take three years to teach him all: to play soldier with a gun, to dance, to bow his head, to kneel, to play churn the rice,[1] to swim in water with a boy on his back, or to take a basket and go from door to door and beg rice and money for his master. Even then his training was not complete until he could hunt the fox, the gibbon, the mouse-deer, and other animals.
Woo-Hsing's little boy had been named Yiong-Yueng, which in Chinese means "Forever." The reason for the name was this: Woo-Hsing had been given many sons, but they had all died young, so when the last one came he named him Forever, for he said, "He will then live a long time and I shall not be childless."
Yiong-Yueng called his dog Hsi-Long, which means "for fun." He was a very wise dog and learned so
- ↑ The Chinese farmers have a rice churn which takes the final husk off the rice. It holds about two bushels and works with treadle very much like our old-fashioned dog churns. It takes the women about half an hour to churn (or thresh) one churnful of rice.
