The Hundred-Bird Coat

Zhuang Legend of the Feather Robe

A young man weaves a coat of a hundred birds and wins back his wife from a tyrant’s greed.

A poor woodcutter marries a beautiful girl who is soon seized by the local chieftain. Before she goes she tells her husband to catch a hundred birds and sew a coat of their feathers. Dressed in the hundred-bird coat and singing as he dances, the woodcutter so charms the chieftain that the tyrant trades clothes with him — and the couple escape together, leaving the chief in the feathers of his own greed.