World classic, retold in simple Mandarin
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
阿拉丁和神灯
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (阿拉丁和神灯, Ālādīng hé shén dēng) is a fairy tale by Antoine Galland, retold in simple Mandarin as a 5-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from Antoine Galland's Thousand and One Nights: a poor boy in China, a magician who says he is his uncle, a cave of jewel fruit, and two booming genies, one in a ring and one in an old lamp.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — Tells Galland's old tale of the lamp plainly and warmly, like a grandfather by the fire.
- Aladdin · 阿拉丁 — A poor tailor's son who would rather play than work: cheeky, brave, always hungry, and much cleverer than he looks.
- Aladdin's Mother · 妈妈 — A widow who spins cotton to feed her son, quick to scold, quicker to worry, and terrified of genies.
- The Magician · 魔法师 — A sly magician from Africa who pretends to be Aladdin's long-lost uncle so the boy will fetch a magic lamp for him.
- The Genie of the Lamp · 灯神 — An enormous, booming genie who must obey whoever holds the lamp, and who keeps bumping his head on low ceilings.
- The Genie of the Ring · 戒指神 — The very proper genie of the magician's ring, who serves whoever wears it but will not do the lamp genie's work.
- The Princess · 公主 — The king's daughter, curious and full of laughter, and much braver than anyone expects.
- The King · 国王 — The ruler of the city, who loves jewels, loves his daughter even more, and shouts whenever he is surprised.
5 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Long-Lost Uncle
叔叔回来了
Aladdin would rather play than sew and dreams of being rich. Then a tall stranger with a pocketful of gold claims to be his long-lost uncle. But why has he really come?
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Chapter 2: The Lamp in the Cave
山洞里的灯
Out in the mountains the ground splits open, and Aladdin climbs down to fetch an old lamp from a garden where the fruit glows. Getting back out is another matter.
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Chapter 3: Two Genies
戒指神和灯神
Trapped in the dark, Aladdin presses his hands together to pray and gets a very big surprise. Then Mother decides to clean an old lamp before she sells it.
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Chapter 4: New Lamps for Old
新灯换旧灯
A bowl of jewels, forty golden plates and a palace built overnight win Aladdin his princess. Then an old man comes down the street calling, “New lamps for old!”
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Chapter 5: The Flying Palace
会飞的宫殿
The genie must obey whoever holds the lamp, and now the magician holds it. Can Aladdin find a palace that has flown to the other side of the world?
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Key words in Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
Behind the story
This book retells Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp, from Antoine Galland's French translation of the Thousand and One Nights. Galland heard the story in Paris in 1709 from Hanna Diyab, a young Syrian storyteller from Aleppo, and wrote it into his collection. Our retelling keeps Galland's plot: the magician who calls himself an uncle, two genies (one in a ring, one in a lamp), a palace built in a single night, and the cry of “new lamps for old.”
Chinese readers know the Nights as 一千零一夜, and this story as 阿拉丁和神灯, or simply 阿拉丁神灯. Galland's first lines hold a surprise for them: the story begins in a city in China. So Aladdin, for all his Arabic name, is a Chinese boy, and our pictures place him in an oasis town on the Silk Road.
Did you know?
- Galland's story opens in the capital of a rich kingdom in China, even though its ruler is a sultan and its hero has an Arabic name.
- No Arabic text of Aladdin older than Galland's has ever been found, so scholars call it an “orphan tale,” like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, another story Galland heard from Hanna Diyab.
- An older Chinese name for the Nights, 天方夜谭, means “night tales from Arabia” (天方 was an old Chinese name for Arabia). Today it is an everyday idiom for a story too fantastic to believe.