The tales we tell our children pass along an understanding of the world, and that understanding is not always a cheerful one. But the entertainment industry, while it seems increasingly open to diversity, may be reluctant to include unhappy endings. PNS editor Andrew Lam is a journalist and short-story writer based in San Francisco. A longer version of this essay appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

Last week I took my six year old niece to see Disney's latest animation. The young audience was in a frenzy throughout, laughing and cheering for the sword-wielding heroine Mulan and her silly little dragon Mooshoo and so, I admit, was I. Indeed, who wouldn't rally for Mulan when she, using brains over brawn, defeated the evil Hun leader on the rooftop of the Imperial Palace?

But out in the sun, with my niece pulling me toward the shopping mall in search of a Mulan doll, my mind veered back to my Vietnamese past.

The fairy tales I knew growing up in Vietnam during the war almost always had tragic endings -- the young widow turns into stone, the virtuous daughter is murdered and turns into a pear, the beautiful princess dies and her heart turns into a blood red ruby. Those unbearably hot summer nights in Saigon, my older siblings and I would often throw a mat on the tile floor in Grandma's room, the coolest in the house, and beg her for a story. Grandma would always oblige. Thirty years and a continent away I can still hear her voice, clear and sad, lulling us toward sleep.

Once upon a time there lived a beautiful princess. Every morning she combed her hair while she listened to the fisherman singing on the river below her pavilion. That voice became part of her life -- so much so that when he sailed away at the end of summer she fell ill and died. In her ashes, the grief-stricken king found a blood red ruby. He had it carved into a drinking bowl and every time he poured tea into it, an image of the fisherman appeared, drifting lazily to and fro on his little boat on the misty water.

Years later, the fisherman, moved by an inexplicable curiosity, came and begged the king to let him see this bowl. Finally admitted, he recognized his own image and wept. Then another miracle occurred: as his tears fell into it, the bowl melted into blood and disappeared.

In Vietnamese fairy tales, noble deeds are rarely rewarded with happily ever afters, broken love is the norm, and those who do good can be and often are punished. There is good reason for this vein of morbid realism. These stories are concerned with their young listeners' spiritual growth, not with convincing them that they live in a benevolent universe. Considering how the country has been war ridden for thousands of years and how disasters have a way of destroying hope, Vietnamese tales have evolved as a way to prepare the next generation for cataclysm and grief.

My niece, bright-eyed and cheerful and an America born, is innocent of all that. Hers is a sunny world of ballet and piano and French lessons and familial intimacies. Her shelf holds characters from her favorite movies, Anastasia, The Little Mermaid, and now Mulan, the pantheon of the Church of Disney which preaches that the only possible outcome is happily ever after.

In a way I suppose I am grateful that she leads such a blessed life. Yet she is beginning to see some dark clouds at the horizon. Inquisitive and sharp as a whip, she already doubts the existence of Santa Claus. She watched the funeral of Princess Diana -- the only real-life princess she knew -- on TV with tightly knitted brows. When the camera zoomed in on the white flowers on the coffin with the word "Mummy" scribbled by little Prince Harry, she broke into torrential tears. It was a first touch with her roots -- something like a Vietnamese fairy tale in a real life saga.

My theory is that young American teenagers are cynical because they have been betrayed by adults. Children are spoon-fed undaunted optimism and then grow up to confront realities like divorce, domestic violence, drugs, broken homes, failed politicians. The little train that could carries very few passengers these days. No wonder so many teenagers, as if chasing the saccharine of childhood narratives, seek solace in the pages of Stephen King and Anne Rice, horror's king and queen.

My Vietnamese grandmother was fatalistic but she was also wise. She belonged to the world of prudence and warnings -- where terrible things happen to ordinary people. Grandma's stories are wonderful in their maturity.

My complaint is with Disney. Having mined all the materials in the West, it now turns to narratives from the East. Chinese friends and Vietnamese relatives are jubilant about "a movie that tells our story" but I am wary. Is seeing one's reflection on the silver screen worthwhile if the price is loss of control in the telling of the narrative?

I am enthusiastic about the globalization process, but Disney seems a bad example. To live in a global village is to live with differences in a complex and changing world. This is a task of art. Unfortunately, Disney threatens to swallow all world narratives, break them into bits and pieces, then reconstitute them in a generically cheerful vision. Thus the last Tsar's daughter survives in "Anastasia," and the "Little Mermaid" marries the prince instead of committing suicide, as she did in the old French tale. And Mulan does not suffer years of anguish for being a woman before returning home, middle-aged and battle-weary with terrible memories of blood and gore on her soul.

But the soul is not what intrigues Disney. After all, it is a business and the business is global family entertainment. But where will it stop? One day Disney might turn, God forbid, the Diary of Ann Frank into an animation complete with sappy songs. What moral lesson can come of snatching the ill- fated from their tragic end I do not know, but my guess is very little.

As it is, on her 7th birthday I am determined to tell the darling of our clan a sad ending Vietnamese fairy tale as an amulet for a rainy day. She'll most likely make a funny face and call me "silly uncle" but I hope that tale will stay with her long after her Disney toys are stored up in the attic. And, as with the fisherman in grandma's tale, may it continue to deepen her sense of mystery and appreciation for her distant and incongruous past.