Afanti stories have been handed down widely in China among the Turkic-speaking Uygur people from generation to generation for many centuries. After a national folklore literature journal introduced Afanti stories in 1955, Afanti the trickster and the poor people's hero no longer remained a household word only in the northwestern regions. He has become a favorite all over China. Selections of Afanti stories have been been published in China in several editions. Some stories have already been moved to the movie screen and to the opera stage. Nevertheless, the thorough research on Afanti has been done in China only sporadically. The present translation, as my thesis, presents to the English reader 100 Afanti jests from among over 400 of the latest, the most complete and authoritative Chinese edition. In order to facilitate comparative study, in my introduction and the notes following each text I try to place the stories of Afanti into the context of world folklore according to Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folklore-Literature and Aarne-Thompson's The Types of the Folktale.
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