Ye Xian is Wu's daughter of one wife, and she is extremely beautiful, kind and gentle, and gifted in many skills such as pottery and poetry.

Long before the Qin and Han Dynasty, in a small community of cave-dwellers called Wudong, their chief by the name of Wu had two wives by custom and a daughter by each of them. Chinese compilations attest several versions from oral sources. It is one of the oldest known variants of Cinderella, first published in the Tang dynasty compilation Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written around 850 by Duan Chengshi. ' Ye Xian' ( traditional Chinese: 葉限 simplified Chinese: 叶限 pinyin: Yè Xiàn Wade–Giles: Yeh Hsien ) is a Chinese fairy tale that is similar to the European Cinderella story, the Malay-Indonesian Bawang Putih Bawang Merah tale, the Vietnamese Tấm Cám story, and stories from other ethnic groups including the Tibetans and the Zhuangs. JSTOR ( May 2010) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. He eventually does so taking her as his wife to her joy, and leaving the stepmother and daughter behind.This article needs additional citations for verification. She leaves behind a golden slipper which is discovered by a King who resolves to discover the owner. She goes to the festival and enjoys herself until she needs to leave to avoid discovery by her stepmother. A spirit, however, tells her where to discover some clothes to wear to the festival. Soon the Spring Festival begins, and Ye Xian is told to stay and clean by her stepmother. Ye Xian collects the bones and is told by a spirit to place them at each foot of her bed, and she will be granted wishes if she requests them of the bones. She is soon overjoyed to find her mother reincarnated as a large fish in a nearby lake watching over her, though learning of this the stepmother has the fish captured and served to herself and her own daughter. Ye Xian (or Yeh-Shen) is the daughter of a scholar with two wives, when her mother and then her father die from a local plague, Ye Xian is forced to become a lowly servant and work for her father's other wife (Ye Xian's stepmother) and her half-sister. The story first appears during the 9th Century in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang. Yeh-shen is a Chinese Fairy Tale known to be one of the oldest variations of 'Cinderella'.

Yeh-Shen by Ai-Ling Louie