Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
The Mouse's Wedding
老鼠嫁女
The Mouse's Wedding (老鼠嫁女, Lǎoshǔ jià nǚ) is a Chinese folk tale, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 1 (Beginner).
Retold from a Chinese New Year folk tale: Father Mouse will marry his daughter only to the strongest husband in the world, but the Sun, the Cloud, the Wind and the Wall each say someone else is stronger.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells the mouse wedding the way grandparents tell it at New Year.
- Father Mouse · 老鼠爸爸 — A proud, fussy father who bows low to anyone important and is sure his daughter deserves the strongest husband in the world.
- Mimi · 米米 — Father Mouse's quick-witted daughter, who loves the hole-digging mouse next door and has no wish to marry anything in the sky.
- Ah Hui · 阿灰 — A shy young grey mouse who loves Mimi and never stops digging holes.
- Grandpa Sun · 太阳公公 — The jolly old Sun, who laughs at everything, even at himself.
- Mr. Cloud · 云先生 — A sleepy, slow-talking cloud who would much rather be napping.
- Mr. Wind · 风先生 — A loud, boastful wind who can never keep still and loves to show off.
- Grandpa Wall · 墙爷爷 — The hundred-year-old wall of the mice's own house: creaky, kind, and tired of having holes dug in him.
- Big Tabby Cat · 大花猫 — The fat, sly cat of the house, who says he loves mice more than anything.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: Who Is the Strongest?
谁最厉害
Proud Father Mouse will marry his daughter Mimi only to the strongest husband in the world, so up to the rooftop they go to ask Grandpa Sun.
Free to read
Chapter 2: The Cloud and the Wind
云和风
Up on the roof, Father Mouse asks the sleepy Cloud and then the boastful Wind to marry Mimi, and their answers lead somewhere nobody expected.
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Chapter 3: Grandpa Wall
墙爷爷
The old wall of the mice's own house has a surprising answer to “who is the strongest?”, but stubborn Father Mouse has a dangerous idea of his own.
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Chapter 4: The Wedding Night
花轿来了
On New Year's night the mice carry Mimi's bridal chair to the Big Tabby Cat, and only Ah Hui's secret plan stands between the bride and the cat's big mouth.
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Key words in The Mouse's Wedding
Behind the story
老鼠嫁女, “the mouse marries off his daughter,” also called 老鼠娶亲, “the mouse wedding,” is a folk tale told all over China, and it belongs to the Lunar New Year. In many places families set aside one night of the New Year season as the mice's wedding night: they go to bed early, keep the house quiet and leave a little food in the corners as a wedding gift, so that the mice won't make trouble in the year ahead. Which night it is differs from place to place.
Folk New Year prints (年画) and paper-cuts show the wedding procession: mice beating drums and blowing horns, carrying lanterns and a tiny bridal sedan chair, and sometimes a big cat waiting at the end of the road. In many old tellings the father really does choose the cat, and that wedding ends badly for the bride. This retelling follows the chain of “who is stronger” all the way back to a mouse, and lets the daughter marry the one she loves.
Did you know?
- The same chain is told far beyond China. Japan has its own mouse's wedding, with the sun, the cloud, the wind and the wall, and in India's ancient Panchatantra a mountain takes the wall's place. In both, a mouse turns out to be the best husband after all.
- The writer Lu Xun remembered a mouse-wedding print pasted up by his bed when he was a boy, and how he stayed up on the wedding night hoping to see the procession come out from under the bed. He wrote about it in 朝花夕拾, a collection of essays looking back on his childhood and youth.
- The Chinese character 鼠 covers both “mouse” and “rat,” so the little bride and her wedding procession often turn up on paper-cuts for the Year of the Rat, the first animal of the Chinese zodiac.