Chinese Idiom Stories 2

Meet the voices

• Narrator · 旁白 — Tells six more very old stories the way a grandfather tells them by the fire, naming each idiom before its story begins.
• The man from Chu · 楚国人 — A proud traveler from the state of Chu who loves his fine sword and never panics, even when he should.
• The boatman · 船家 — A weathered ferryman who has carried every kind of passenger, but never one quite like this.
• The farmer · 农夫 — An impatient farmer in the state of Song who can't bear to wait for anything, least of all his sprouts.
• A Niu · 阿牛 — The farmer's sensible twelve-year-old son, who knows a thing or two about sprouts.
• Li San · 李三 — A sly young man with big plans for getting rich and very odd ideas about how ears work.
• Auntie Wang · 王大妈 — The sharp-eyed woman who lives next door to the Fan family's empty house and hears everything.
• Lord Ye · 叶公 — A nobleman of Chu who tells everyone he loves dragons more than anything in the world.
• A Fu · 阿福 — Lord Ye's servant, who has painted so many dragons that he dreams about them.
• The dragon · 龙 — A real dragon from the sky, big and friendly, and very excited to meet its biggest fan.
• Sai Weng · 塞翁 — An old man on the northern frontier who answers every piece of news, good or bad, with “Who knows?”
• Sai Weng's son · 儿子 — Sai Weng's lively son, who loves nothing more than a fast horse.
• Mrs. Zhang · 张大嫂 — Sai Weng's chatty neighbor, always the first to hear the news and the first to say what it means.
• Yu Gong · 愚公 — The Foolish Old Man, nearly ninety, who decides that two mountains are in his way and have to go.
• Yu Gong's wife · 妻子 — Yu Gong's practical wife, who asks the one question nobody else thought of.
• Zhi Sou · 智叟 — The Wise Old Man from the river bend, who is sure he knows better than everyone.
• Little Stone · 小石头 — The seven-year-old boy next door, who has just lost a tooth and wants to help move a mountain.

6 chapters, one journey

Key words in Chinese Idiom Stories 2

• 铃 líng: bell
• 剑 jiàn: sword
• 马 mǎ: horse
• 耳朵 ěr duo: ear
• 老人 lǎo rén: old man
• 爸爸 bà ba: dad
• 画 huà: to paint
• 搬 bān: to move
• 刻 kè: to carve
• 响 xiǎng: to ring

Behind the story

Chengyu (成语) are set phrases, most of them four characters long, and many carry a whole story inside them. This book retells six more. The lost sword and the bell come from the Lüshi Chunqiu (吕氏春秋), put together around 240 BC for Lü Buwei, chancellor of Qin. The impatient farmer is from the Mencius (孟子), Lord Ye's dragons from Liu Xiang's Xinxu (新序), the runaway horse from the Huainanzi (淮南子), and the old man and the mountains from the Liezi (列子).

Chinese children meet these stories at primary school, and adults still use the idioms every day. Parents who push a small child too hard are warned against 拔苗助长. Someone who fools only himself is doing 掩耳盗铃. After a piece of bad luck, a friend may say 塞翁失马 to remind you that it could still turn out well, and 愚公移山 stands for any huge job done patiently, one basket at a time.

Did you know?

• Lord Ye was a real man: a nobleman of Chu who lived at the same time as Confucius. In the Analects (论语), he asks Confucius how to govern.
• In the oldest version of the bell story, in the Lüshi Chunqiu, the man gets hold of a huge bronze bell (钟) that belonged to the fallen Fan family. It is far too heavy to carry, so he tries to break it into pieces.
• People often add a second half to the horse idiom: 塞翁失马，焉知非福, “the old man lost his horse, but who knows? It may be a blessing.”