We owned these as a single paperback, and I remember at least Dragon Fish being one of the stories my father dictated onto his reel-to-reel tape deck for us to have as bedtime stories when he was out. (Appropriate to remember around Father’s Day–thanks, Daddy!) What led me to dig them up was a quote from Wolf Totem that I forgot to transcribe:
Westerners eat with a knife and fork, devour rare beef, consume cheese and butter. That is why they have kept a lot of their primitive, animal nature, much more so than agricultural peoples.
That reminded me of the “ew, you smell like butter!” idea from The Water-Buffalo Children, which was one of the few memories I had of this book–I vaguely remembered it was Pearl Buck, but the the other vivid images were of Alice’s mother making her warm milk and toast and an egg to welcome her home, and of the heavy jade dragon fish. I had forgotten Da Lobo, the cranky water-buffalo, and the fact that Lan-may and Alice, who meet and find the dragon fish, both run away from home because they are tired of boys. A lot of cliches, but still enjoyable stories.