Chin and Her Button Outfit

Story on a theme:  BUTTON

Our story begins in the small village of Twang deep in the heart of China. Now the town folk of Twang were all thin; having only meager rice and spring water to sustain them. In the village there also lived a seamstress named Chin. Chin was an exception. Chin was fat; very fat. It was commonly believed that if it were not for her stubby arms and legs protruding from her body that she could be rolled down Wi Lai hill and not stop until she reached the Jung Valley ten kilometers below the village.

Growing up was difficult for Chin. The Loo brothers were incessant pests during her primary school years. She could recall their taunting as clearly as if they were happening to her now; eight years later. “Hey double Chin, we need to roll you around over here to smooth out the soccer field,” Water Loo would shout as his brother Lu rolled on the field laughing.

Chin had turned to sewing as a refuge against the seemingly endless smirks and taunts the villagers gave her over her weight. Her mother had a large wicker basket full of buttons. Chin had never seen so many lovely and amazing buttons in her life. These buttons were beautiful. They ranged from very petite golden ones to large square buttons. There were many sizes, shapes, colors and textures to observe in her mother’s button basket.

She was never allowed to wear buttons after the incident when she was three and she had bulged out so much her button on her jumper suit shot off and hit Uncle Feng right between the eyes. After that incident, none of her clothing ever contained a button again. She was, however, allowed to sew the buttons on spare fabric at her aunt’s seamstress shop. It was the same shop she ultimately took over after primary school when her aunt grew ill.

The eight years after her primary school hadn’t been any easier in the village. She’d been promoted from “double Chin” to “triple Chin” by the Loo brothers recently. It seemed that nothing would ever change for her. And in the course of those eight years she took the basket of buttons that her mother had given her at her graduation and slowly began sewing them onto a shirt and pant set that she kept at the seamstress shop.

The button outfit was the talk of the town. Crazy fat Chin was randomly sewing hundreds of buttons on some ugly outfit. Customers would snicker when they came into the shop. They would come up with cruel little jokes like “button up your lips, Hung, it’s not nice to stare,” while they giggled amongst themselves.

Over the eight years Chin had saved up enough money to leave the village in the hopes to find happiness somewhere else. But she wanted to wait until the annual Rice O Roni festival at the end of the growing season. Nobody in her family could understand the logic for this. “Chin, you’ve got the money to find happiness. Why do you stick around for a festival you’ve been tormented at by the villagers every year since you were little?” her mother would ask.

But Chin just smiled. She had a plan. The day of the festival, her bags all packed and loaded up on the carriage; she took her button outfit and put it on for the first time ever. There were seemingly hundreds of buttons on it by this time. In fact, there were so many that it was difficult for Chin to even move under its bulky weight.

Outside among the villagers at the festival, Chin was the main attraction. All the villagers had gathered around to laugh at Chin’s ridiculous button outfit and the immense girth she displayed within it. The Loo brothers were right there too, encouraging all their old classmates to come closer and see what crazy fat Chin was up to now.

Chin was different though for this festival. Rather than dropping her face down in shame and shying away from the forefront of the crowd as in years past, she was encouraging them around her, even ensuring they had a full circle and that everyone got a decent look at her button outfit. And they did! The villagers were ecstatic watching her as they laughed and got closer.

It was right then that Chin finally got her revenge. She summoned up all her energy into one giant heave of her girth and expanded her button outfit to the point that every single button on the outfit exploded from the pressure of her blubbery contortions. The buttons flew off as if they had just been launched by individual sling shots. And as she had planned, she single-handedly got even with every single villager that had gathered and laughed at her all of her life. The buttons had hit all of them like a hail of bullets and they were all lying on the ground in the village writhing in pain

Chin smiled at the carnage around her and she stepped over their welted bodies and onto her carriage and proceeded down to the Jung valley. News of her plan traveled through China faster than her horse could take her. When she finally settled in a town not too far on the other side of the Jung valley, the town folk were already in awe of her legendary feat and nobody ever bothered her about her weight again.