World classic, retold in simple Mandarin
The Gingerbread Man
姜饼人
The Gingerbread Man (姜饼人, Jiāngbǐng rén) is a fairy tale, retold in simple Mandarin as a 3-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 1 (Beginner).
Retold from the American fairy tale first printed in 1875: a cheeky gingerbread man jumps out of the oven and outruns everyone who wants a bite, until a very polite fox offers him a ride across the river.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells the tale plainly and warmly, the way it has been told to children for a century and a half.
- The Gingerbread Man · 姜饼人 — A cheeky gingerbread man, fresh from the oven, who loves to run, loves to sing, and is sure nobody in the world can catch him.
- The Old Woman · 老奶奶 — A little old woman who always wished for a child, bakes one out of gingerbread, and keeps her hungry husband in line.
- The Old Man · 老爷爷 — Her jolly, always-hungry husband, whose little joke about one bite starts all the trouble.
- The Cow · 奶牛 — A slow, sleepy, very polite dairy cow who is tired of eating grass every single day.
- The White Horse · 白马 — A proud white horse with a first-prize ribbon, who is always about to catch you any second now.
- The Fox · 狐狸 — A smooth-talking red fox who is very polite, very helpful, and not hungry at all. Not one bit.
3 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: A Voice in the Oven
烤箱里的声音
An old woman bakes a gingerbread man and wishes he could be her child. Then a voice starts shouting inside the oven, and the old man says one word too many.
Free to read
Chapter 2: Nobody Can Catch Me
谁也追不到我
A slow, polite cow and a proud white horse both want a bite of the runaway cookie. Then the road ends at a wide river, and someone friendly is waiting in the grass.
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Chapter 3: The Fox at the River
河边的狐狸
The fox wades into the river with the gingerbread man on his tail. The water keeps rising, the fox keeps smiling, and soon there's only one place left to climb: his nose.
SayMei Stories
Key words in The Gingerbread Man
Behind the story
The Gingerbread Man is an American fairy tale, first printed in 1875 as “The Gingerbread Boy” in St. Nicholas, a magazine for children. A little old woman and a little old man have no children, so she bakes a boy out of gingerbread; he jumps out of the oven and outruns everyone who wants to eat him, until he meets a fox. Very similar tales of runaway food are told across Europe, such as Kolobok, the round bun of Russian and Ukrainian folk tales, and the runaway pancake of Norway and Germany.
In Chinese the story is called 姜饼人, the “ginger-cake person,” and it is a familiar picture-book tale, both in Chinese and in easy English readers for young learners. The cookie itself has become a Christmas treat in China: every December, gingerbread men and gingerbread houses (姜饼屋) appear in bakeries and coffee shops, especially in big cities.
Did you know?
- In the oldest printed version, the gingerbread boy's run ends when the fox eats him. Many later retellings add a river that the fox offers to carry him across; this book lets him jump to safety at the very last moment.
- Ginger (姜) has been part of Chinese cooking and medicine for well over two thousand years. The Analects (论语) note that Confucius always kept ginger on the table at his meals.
- A Chinese saying fits this story well: 姜还是老的辣, “old ginger is hotter,” meaning that age and experience beat the cleverness of youth.