Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Lu Ban the Master Builder
鲁班的故事
Lu Ban the Master Builder (鲁班的故事, Lǔ Bān de gùshi) is a Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 1 (Beginner).
Retold from Chinese folk legends: young Lu Ban sharpens a sleepy master's axes, learns a trick from a blade of grass, is outdone by his clever wife, and holds up a bridge with his bare hands.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells the Lu Ban legends the way carpenters' grandfathers told them in the workshop.
- Lu Ban · 鲁班 — A young carpenter from the State of Lu who has to take a close look at everything, patient enough to sharpen axes for a week and curious enough to learn from a blade of grass.
- The Old Master · 老师父 — A master carpenter on a faraway mountain who can make anything, and who would much rather be asleep.
- Little Stone · 小石头 — Lu Ban's young apprentice, a hard worker who is always tired, always hungry and always the first to complain.
- A-Yun · 阿云 — Lu Ban's quick-witted wife, who calls him her big blockhead and has a clever idea of her own.
- Zhang Guolao · 张果老 — One of the Eight Immortals, a merry old man who rides his little donkey backward and likes to put a new bridge to the test.
- Old Grandma · 老奶奶 — An old woman from Zhaozhou who walks for ten days to ask Lu Ban for a bridge.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Sleepy Master
爱睡觉的师父
Young Lu Ban walks for days to learn from a master who can make anything, only to find the old man fast asleep and his axes worn out.
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Chapter 2: The Grass with Teeth
有牙的小草
The king wants a palace, the axes are too slow, and Lu Ban's apprentice is starving. Then, on a steep mountain path, a little blade of grass bites.
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Chapter 3: The Walking Pavilion
会走的亭子
Lu Ban builds shelters all along the rainy roads, but A-Yun says a real shelter should walk with you, and she's secretly making one.
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Chapter 4: The Zhaozhou Bridge
赵州桥
Lu Ban has one night to bridge a wild river. By morning the town is cheering, until a merry old man riding his donkey backward asks for a test.
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Key words in Lu Ban the Master Builder
Behind the story
Lu Ban (鲁班) was a real craftsman who lived about 2,500 years ago in the State of Lu (鲁国), in what is now Shandong province. His family name was Gongshu (公输), and people called him Lu Ban, “Ban of Lu.” For centuries, Chinese carpenters and builders honored him as the master of their trade, and folk tales gave him credit for all kinds of clever tools.
This book retells four of those tales: the sleepy master who taught him, the blade of grass that gave him the idea for the saw (锯), the umbrella (伞) that legend says his wife invented, and the Zhaozhou Bridge (赵州桥), which he was said to have built in a single night. The real bridge, in Hebei province, was built around the year 600 by a craftsman named Li Chun (李春), more than a thousand years after Lu Ban, but the legend gave it to the greatest builder people knew.
Did you know?
- An old Chinese idiom, 班门弄斧, “swinging an axe at Lu Ban's door,” describes showing off your skills in front of a real expert.
- China's top award for the quality of a building project is named after him: the Luban Prize (鲁班奖).
- The Zhaozhou Bridge has stood for about 1,400 years. The four small arches at its ends make it lighter and let floodwater through, and it is often called the world's oldest standing open-spandrel stone arch bridge.