The Tale of Three Trees
The Tale of Three Trees was passed down to me orally, as folktales are, while roaming through the streets of GuangZhou last year. The storyteller loved and cherished this tale from childhood. The simplistic yet deep-reaching truth of the story had inspired her to write her own.
8 months laters, by the rarest of chances, that this book caught our eyes while we were visiting a flea market in Stockholm. We only saw it fitting to bring this story back to the storyteller, now a bride, as she goes forth to build a new home (and joint library collection) with her groom.
As this tale has and continues to travel with us wherever we go since that night in GuangZhou.
We hope this book, having traveled from Stockholm to Toronto, will find its resting place in Hong Kong.
… But not before adding a few words of our own 😉
Prologue
Christmases came and went.
The little boy, Cameron, became a big boy. The big boy became a little man. And the little man became a man.
This little book went from Cameron’s bookshelf to his closet, and then from his closet to a bustling flea market in a foreign land. Week after week, the book longed to share the story on his pages.
One day in a time called 2017, the little book–now hidden under a table at the edge of the flea market–caught the attention of two unassuming travelers. “Look, this book reminds me of home!” said one traveler to the other. They opened the little book … and this is his story…
The Tale
Epilogue
Centuries, perhaps, millennia later, in a far and distant land, a fourth little tree stood on a hilltop where an university was situated, and as he look around, he saw professors and students scurrying past, attending lectures and discussing what they learnt. He dreamt of the knowledge gathered and discovered through the ages and wished to be counted amongst the great. “One day I shall be made into a great book that records the most profound theories of the day, one that is sought after by scholars and teachers, and be stored in the enclosures of royal archives, as an irreplaceable cornerstone of civilization, upon which subsequent knowledges are derived from.”
Years passed. The rain came, the sun shone, and the little tree grew tall and fair.
One day a woodcutter came. The woodcutter looked at the fourth tree and said, “This tree is tall and fair. It is perfect for me.” With a swoop of her shining axe, the fourth tree fell.
“Now I shall be a great book!” the fourth tree rejoiced. “I will share profound knowledge to the most erudite scholars and thinkers in the world. I shall hold the secrets of the universe!”
The fourth tree was excited when the woodcutter took him to a paper mill. His long and fair fibers were pulverized and pressed into paper. But the secrets of the universe remained secrets; for the fourth tree was printed and bound into a children’s book. Great was the fourth tree’s disappointment.
One Christmas morning, the fourth little tree that became a children’s book was given to a little boy named Cameron. He was not stored in prestigious halls, but only in a little boy’s home. It pained the tree to remember the dream he once had.
But as the child read his words aloud, the tree realized what had been written on his pages is a story of a love that is greater than all knowledge, yet so universal and simple that a child may cherish it. One that points to a much greater Story, holding a Truth so timeless it has spanned the ages.
The little tree that became a little book was not stored in the important halls built by men, but resides in the hearts of children, living in their memory as a signpost to something greater. And that is beyond anything he had ever dreamt of.
