Chicken and egg? Eggs and chickens? The chicken came first? Which came first? The origin of the chicken has been debated for thousands of years. In fact, the first egg was laid by a chicken, but the first chicken was not born from an egg. Where did the chicken that laid the first egg come from?
Legend has it that a long time ago, on the beach of the Yellow River in the Central Plains, a brother and a sister lived alone. The parents died early, and the responsibility of raising the younger sister naturally fell on the elder brother's shoulders. It was not easy to feed a family in those days. There has been nine droughts in ten years, and the crops in the fields have been irrigated by quintals of water from the Yellow River. The harvest is very limited. But the girl on the beach of the Yellow River is young and ignorant. She follows her brother who is sweating hard all day long and shouts "Hungry". Gradually, the brother feels that she is a burden. He was also hungry, so he got angry when he heard his sister shout "hungry". First, he scolded her, then scolded her, and finally beat her. But training, scolding, and beating cannot satisfy hunger. The little girl still shouted "hungry" all day long. Hungry made her forget all other words, so she would shout this one word. The shouting became a habit, and her brother also made it a habit to beat and scold her. As time went by, my brother even forgot her name. Even after he got married and had children, he still kept shouting the word "hungry".
One day a few years later, the sun was scorching in the sky and smoke was rising from the earth. My brother and sister-in-law were sweating profusely on the riverbank carrying water to water the crops. Hungry dragged his little nephew from home. When she saw her brother, she shouted "Hungry" without saying a word. The brother became angry and grabbed a white and smooth pebble on the river beach and hit his sister. The brother wanted to scare him, but unexpectedly, his sister fell to the ground and died, her thin face covered with blood. The elder brother was shocked. Thinking of his parents' instructions before his death and the cold and hunger his sister suffered from, the elder brother cried out to heaven and earth and regretted it so much! But people cannot be resurrected after death, and the most they can do is cry a few more times.
One day not long after the girl died, my brother and sister-in-law were pounding rice in the yard. Suddenly, a thin leg with a sharp beak flew down from the wall. Their children jumped for joy when they saw this cute little thing. The little thing looked around in the yard for a while, then used its legs to make a nest in the thatch in the middle of the yard and lay down. Its little face was getting redder and redder, as if it was stained with blood. Red, red, it suddenly jumped out and started shouting "Go, go, go, go," around the grass nest.
When the brother and sister-in-law took a look, there was something smooth and white in the grass nest where it had been lying just now. The sister-in-law shouted out loud: "God, this is the return of hunger!" Didn't you hear it keep calling "Kota"?" Seeing that her husband was still full of doubts, the sister-in-law turned around, grabbed a handful of rice from the stone mortar, handed it to the child and said, "Go, scatter the rice on the ground. If your aunt changes, you call aunt, and it will come to eat!" The child threw a handful of rice and kept calling "aunt, aunt". When the little thing heard this, he ran over and ate it.
My brother believed it this time. He rushed over, held "Hungry" in his arms, stroked its soft feathers, and burst into tears: "Hungry, brother knows, brother knows, brother I'm sorry for you, I'm sorry for you! When you come back, don't leave. I didn't treat you well in the past, but I will always support you in the future!" After hearing these words, the little thing twisted in his arms and kept shouting, "Brother, brother", which made people feel sad. From then on, "Hungry" settled in his brother's house, and his nephew called him "Auntie, Auntie" every day to feed him.
Later, Cangjie, the man who invented the Chinese character, came here to teach culture along the Yellow River. The brother and sister-in-law begged Cangjie to create a character for his sister as a name. Cangjie asked about the situation, and when he saw the "hungry" look, he blurted out: "No need to make it, it is a bird! Add the word 'xi' next to it." His brother said: "It looks like an elephant bird, but it can't fly high! Why add the word 'xi'?" Cangjie said: "An elephant bird can't fly high, this is a weird thing. But although it is special, most of it is still a bird, and the 'bird' is ridiculing it."As for what to read—just read whatever your sister used to be called! "
So far, this little thing has its own name "chicken". From then on, people fed it to lay eggs. When feeding it, they used to call it "aunt". When the "chicken" lays eggs, it always screams "kota goda". After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the text reform simplified the word "chicken" into the word "chicken".
Qiu Ming
