Clever Kids of Old China

Meet the voices

• Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells four famous childhood stories from different times, the way they are told to children all over China.
• Sima Guang · 司马光 — A serious seven-year-old of the Song dynasty who loves books and keeps his head when everyone else panics.
• Xiao Hu · 小虎 — Sima Guang's show-off friend, who always has to be the tallest and never listens to a warning.
• Xiao Yue · 小月 — A little girl who plays in Sima Guang's courtyard, panics first and runs fastest for help.
• Sima Chi · 司马池 — Sima Guang's father, a kind official who tells his book-loving son old stories at bedtime.
• Wang Rong · 王戎 — A quiet seven-year-old with famously bright eyes, who would rather think than run.
• A Niu · 阿牛 — Wang Rong's big, hungry friend, always the first to run and the last to think.
• The old man · 老爷爷 — A jolly old traveler on the road who loves a good riddle.
• Cao Chong · 曹冲 — Cao Cao's small son, who asks the questions nobody else thinks of.
• Cao Cao · 曹操 — The great warlord who runs the Han court, laughs like thunder and hates being stuck.
• The minister · 大臣 — One of Cao Cao's officials, full of big ideas that never quite work.
• Kong Rong · 孔融 — A thoughtful four-year-old in a house full of brothers, in the state of Lu.
• Kong Zhou · 孔宙 — Kong Rong's gentle father, who just wants his sons to share without a squabble.
• Big Brother · 大哥 — Kong Rong's eldest brother, who wants the biggest pear until he sees what his little brother does.
• Baby Brother · 小弟弟 — Kong Rong's toddler brother, whose favorite word is pear.

4 chapters, one journey

Key words in Clever Kids of Old China

• 大象 dà xiàng: elephant
• 梨 lí: pear
• 苦 kǔ: bitter
• 路边 lù biān: roadside
• 分 fēn: to share
• 大人 dà rén: adult
• 爸爸 bà ba: father
• 哥哥 gē ge: older brother
• 船 chuán: boat
• 摘 zhāi: to pick

Behind the story

Almost every Chinese child knows these four stories, and each one comes from an old book. Sima Guang's broken vat is told in the History of Song (宋史), Wang Rong's bitter plums in A New Account of the Tales of the World (世说新语), and Cao Chong's elephant in the Records of the Three Kingdoms (三国志). Kong Rong's pears come from an old family biography, and the Three Character Classic (三字经), the rhyming primer that children learned by heart for centuries, sums the story up in six characters: 融四岁，能让梨, “at four, Rong could give up the pears.”

The children were real people. Sima Guang grew up to be a leading statesman and historian of the Song dynasty, Wang Rong became one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove (竹林七贤), and Kong Rong was counted among the Seven Scholars of Jian'an (建安七子), the finest writers of his day. The stories of Sima Guang, Wang Rong and Cao Chong are lessons in Chinese primary school textbooks, and 孔融让梨 is still the classic example of brothers and sisters sharing.

Did you know?

• Sima Guang grew up to lead the writing of 资治通鉴 (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), a history of China that covers 1,362 years. He and his helpers worked on it for about nineteen years.
• As a grown man, Wang Rong was famous for being stingy. One old story says he sold the plums from his best tree only after boring out their stones, so that nobody else could grow the same plums.
• Kong Rong was a descendant of 孔子 (Confucius) in the twentieth generation, and his family came from the state of Lu, Confucius's own home.