After a day of hiking & sightseeing at Hurricane Ridge, we returned to our hotel in Port Angeles & at around 8 o'clock, began searching for a place to eat dinner. We decided on a Thai restaurant that had very good online reviews. As we pulled up, there was a parking spot right at the front door & I thought "Serendipity, I think we're going to have a fine meal here!". But as we opened the front door, there was a throng of people waiting to be seated & it turned out the wait was at least an hour. We were disappointed, but as it turns out, we found another restaurant & had an excellent meal there. As we were getting back in our car at the Thai restaurant, I noticed these statues out front & they immediately triggered a memory that was about 60 years old & that I hadn't thought of all those years. The memory was of reading a children's book called "The Five Chinese Brothers". I didn't remember the exact details of the story, but I remembered reading & enjoying it. As I was reviewing my photos & came to this one, I googled "Five Chinese Brothers" & found this information on Wikipedia: "The Five Chinese Brothers is an American children's book written by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. It was originally published in 1938 by Coward-McCann. The book is a retelling of a Chinese folk tale, Ten Brothers. The Plot: Long ago in China lived a family with five brothers who resembled each other very closely. They each possessed a special talent. One can swallow the sea; one has an iron neck; one can stretch his legs; one can survive fire; and the last can hold his breath forever. When one of the brothers, a somehow very successful fisherman, agrees to let a young boy accompany him on his fishing trip, trouble results. This brother holds the entire sea in his mouth so that the boy can retrieve fish and treasures. When the man can no longer hold in the sea, he frantically signals to the boy, but the boy ignores him and drowns when the man releases the water. The man is accused of murder and sentenced to death. However, one by one, his four brothers assume his place when subjected to execution, and each uses his own superhuman ability to survive (one cannot be beheaded, one cannot be drowned, one cannot be burned, and one cannot be smothered). At the end of the story, a judge decides that the brother accused of murder must have been innocent, since he could not be executed, and the five brothers return home. Reception and Controversy Though often considered a classic of children's literature, The Five Chinese Brothers has been accused of promoting ethnic stereotypes about the Chinese, particularly through its illustrations, and many teachers have removed the book from their classrooms.[4] However, the book has had some defenders. In a 1977 School Library Journal article, Selma G. Lanes described the illustrations as "cheerful and highly appealing", characterizing Wiese's "broad cartoon style" as "well suited to the folk-tale, a genre which deals in broad truths". She added, "I cannot remember a tale during my childhood that gave me a cozier sense of all being right with the world." Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." When I read this book as a five or six year old, the concept of "ethnic stereotypes", of course, was not a part of my consciousness & I don't think it was even part of the consciousness of most adults. As it happens, in Ashland, which is about 15 minutes south of where I live, there is currently a controversy raging because a local book store has a display of banned books in their window & one of them - another children's book called "Little Black Sambo" - was deemed offensive by some in the community because of it's "ethnic stereotypes". This can be a touchy subject for some, but my opinion is that most of these children's books are pretty innocent & unless they were written with racist intent, are not going to cause young readers to suddenly become racists themselves. There is plenty of overt racism around to crusade against & going after these types of things seems like a waste of energy to me... Please zoom.