The universally recognized folktale archetype known as ‘Cinderella’ (The Persecuted Heroine) has hundreds of recorded variants spanning nearly every culture. Which country is credited with the earliest documented literary version of this specific narrative type, found in a 9th-century text recounting the story of Ye Xian?

💡 Explanation:

The story of Ye Xian (sometimes transliterated as Yeh-Shen) is contained in the 9th-century text *Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang*. This Chinese account, predating the famous European versions by hundreds of years, features a magical fish that grants wishes, a lost shoe, and a stepmother who tries to obstruct the heroine, making it the oldest literary version of the Cinderella type.