The story behind a story

One of the stories is unusual in that it is a story within a story. It's about a book (Sammy reads) called 'Mr Good Bear and Mr Bad Bear'. It has a rather interesting origin. Most of the stories were on themes that came to me, but this one was in response to a request from the young lady I was writing them for. She said 'could I have a story about someone bad?' (There is a story about some not very nice people, Sammy's Nasty Neighbours, but this one was different). At that time I was reading a profound and gruelling book by Nien Cheng, a Chinese lady who had been caught up in China's Cultural Revolution of the 1970s and had to endure six years in the bleakest of prisons. Due, she reveals, to her faith in Christ, though she was tortured and ceaselessly interrogated she was not overwhelmed or corrupted, and lived to write 'Life and Death in Shanghai.' What struck me was that evil cannot do anything creative and that beauty is the product of goodness and a sign of freedom. My little story is not (I should imagine) profound, but it reflects some of what I wanted a little girl to know about good and evil.

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