Once upon a time, there lived a man in a remote countryside. He made a living by gathering firewood. One day, as always, the woodcutter went to the mountain to cut some trees. There, he happened to find two fans—one was red and the other was blue. He wondered who had left the fans in the deep woods. Feeling hot and tired from work, he fanned himself with the red fan. Can you imagine what happened? His nose became a little bit longer. At first, he didn’t even recognize the change in his nose. But as he kept waving the fan, his nose grew longer and longer. He was startled. He instinctively knew this had to do with the fan. He put down the red fan and instead held the blue fan to fan his nose. To his surprise, his nose became smaller and soon returned to normal. Now he understood how these two magic fans worked. He ran toward his house and called out for his wife. He began to wave the red fan in front of his wife. As expected, her nose grew bigger and the poor wife screamed. Then, the man fanned her face with the blue fan and her nose was reduced, back to its normal size. The man conducted a sort of test on his wife and he was pleased with the result.

A few days later, the woodcutter heard that a rich man in the neighborhood would throw his birthday party. The woodcutter had an idea. He knew it was a bad idea, but he didn’t care. He concealed the red fan in his sleeve and visited the wealthy man’s house. It was a hot summer day, and the host was sweating a lot. The woodcutter approached the rich man and said to him, “Sir, it’s very hot today.” Then he held out his red fan and pretended to cool the host with it. Of course, the rich man’s nose became bigger when the woodcutter quickly hid the fan and left the place.

Before long, the rumor of the rich man with an incurable disease spread throughout the village. And there was a notice saying that the rich man would offer a big reward to anyone who could fix his abnormal nose. This was exactly what the woodcutter had expected. The man went to the rich man’s house and promised him to cure his disease. He asked the rich man to close his eyes. Needless to say, it was time to use the blue fan. Miraculously, the man’s nose returned to normal. As he had promised, the rich man gave the woodcutter a huge amount of money. Both men were delighted, of course. If the story ended here, it would have been a happy ending.

Now the woodcutter no longer had to cut trees to earn a living. With the money he received, he bought a nice house and lived comfortably with his wife. But he soon got bored with doing nothing but just loaf around. He thought about his magic fans again. He began to wonder how big his nose would grow if he continued fanning himself with the red fan. So, he kept fanning his face. His nose grew longer and longer and he couldn’t even see the end of it. But he didn’t stop. His nose finally reached the sky and penetrated the floor of heaven. The King of Heaven was angry to see the tip of a man’s nose breaking into his kingdom. The king ordered the angels to tie the rude fellow’s nose tightly.

Down there, the woodcutter suddenly felt a sharp pain in his nose. He thought there was something wrong with his nose. He hastily fanned himself with the blue fan to make his nose smaller. Contrary to his expectations, however, his body floated in the air and began to move up to the sky. The panic-stricken woodcutter struggled in the air, crying out for help. He wriggled so hard that the end of his nose tied in the heaven came loose and his body fell from the air. No one saw him ever again from that day forward.