World classic, retold in simple Mandarin
The Three Little Pigs
三只小猪
The Three Little Pigs (三只小猪, Sān zhī xiǎo zhū) 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 English folk tale: three little pigs build houses of straw, sticks and bricks, and the Big Bad Wolf comes knocking at every door.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells the tale plainly and lets the pigs and the wolf do the talking.
- Mother Pig · 猪妈妈 — The pigs' loving, sensible mother, who sends her three grown sons out to build homes of their own.
- Big Brother Pig · 猪大哥 — The eldest pig, who loves a nap more than anything and wants every job done fast so he can lie down.
- Middle Brother Pig · 猪二哥 — The middle pig, cheerful and always hungry, who never goes anywhere without something to eat.
- Little Brother Pig · 猪小弟 — The youngest pig: small, patient and clever, and sure that a job worth doing is worth doing right.
- The Big Bad Wolf · 大灰狼 — A hungry, boastful wolf who can sweet-talk or bully, and who is sure he can blow any house down.
3 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: Little Pig, Little Pig
小猪，小猪
Three little pigs set out to build houses of their own: one of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks. At sundown, someone knocks at the straw house door.
Free to read
Chapter 2: The House That Would Not Fall
吹不倒的房子
The Big Bad Wolf chases the runaway pig to his brother's house of sticks. Will sticks stop him any better than straw? And what about bricks?
Free to read
Chapter 3: Down the Chimney
烟囱里的大灰狼
Little Brother's plan starts before sunrise, but the Big Bad Wolf is not the kind of wolf who gives up easily.
Free to read
Key words in The Three Little Pigs
Behind the story
The Three Little Pigs is an old English folk tale, passed along by word of mouth long before it was printed. Its best-known early telling appeared in Joseph Jacobs's English Fairy Tales in 1890, and the wolf's threat to “huff and puff” is still an everyday English phrase.
In Chinese the story is called 三只小猪, and it is a favorite of Chinese picture books, cartoons and kindergarten plays. Parents and teachers love its lesson about careful, patient work: the brick house takes longest to build, and it is the only one still standing at the end.
Did you know?
- In the version Joseph Jacobs printed, the third pig outwits the wolf three times before the chimney: he fetches turnips an hour early, throws an apple to escape from a tree, and rolls down a hill inside a butter churn. This retelling borrows his early-morning trick.
- 大灰狼, the “big gray wolf,” is the classic villain of Chinese children's stories. In the well-known children's song 小兔子乖乖, he tries to talk a family of little rabbits into opening their door, just as he does with the pigs here.
- In older tellings, the wolf eats the first two pigs and ends up as the third pig's supper. Many modern retellings, like this one, let everyone run away.