World classic, retold in simple Mandarin
Urashima Taro
浦岛太郎
Urashima Taro (浦岛太郎, Pǔdǎo Tàiláng) is a fairy tale, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from the Japanese folk tale: a kind young fisherman saves a turtle, rides it down to the Dragon Palace under the sea, and comes home with a box he must never open.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — An old storyteller who tells this Japanese tale slowly and warmly, like a grandfather by the fire.
- Urashima Taro · 浦岛太郎 — A kind young fisherman who is better at letting fish go than catching them, and who loves his old mother more than anything.
- The Turtle · 海龟 — An old sea turtle, slow on land and fast in the sea, who insists that at two hundred he is still only a child.
- Princess Otohime · 乙姬 — The princess of the Dragon Palace, gentle and playful, who knows every fish in the sea and keeps one secret in a small black box.
- Taro's Mother · 妈妈 — Taro's old mother, who laughs at her soft-hearted son and always waits for him under the little tree by the door.
- Village Boy · 男孩 — A cheeky village boy who knows a good trade when he sees one.
- Little Girl · 小女孩 — A chatty little girl who knows the village's oldest story by heart, because her grandma tells it all the time.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Turtle on the Beach
海边的海龟
Kind young Urashima Taro gives away his mother's dinner to save a turtle. The next morning, a voice calls to him from the waves with an invitation.
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Chapter 2: The Dragon Palace
龙宫
Hold on tight: the slowest turtle on land is the fastest in the sea. Far below the waves wait a princess, a feast, and a crowd of fish who all seem to know Taro.
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Chapter 3: Never Open the Box
千万不要打开
A window for every season: Taro sees a whole year in one afternoon. But the winter window makes him homesick, and the princess gives him a box with one rule.
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Chapter 4: Three Hundred Years
三百年
Taro is home at last, but the village is full of strangers, and a little girl knows his name from a very old story. The princess's box is still in his hands.
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Key words in Urashima Taro
Behind the story
Urashima Taro is one of Japan's oldest stories. A fisherman called Urashimako already appears in the Nihon Shoki (日本书纪), Japan's oldest official history, finished in 720. In that early version the turtle he catches turns into a woman whom he marries, and together they go into the sea to 蓬莱 (Pénglái), the island of the immortals from Chinese legend. The version told today, in which Taro saves a turtle and rides it down to the Dragon Palace, became the standard one in Japanese children's books and school songs around 1900.
In Chinese the tale keeps its Japanese characters, simply read the Chinese way: 浦岛太郎, Pǔdǎo Tàiláng, and the princess is 乙姬, Yǐjī. Chinese readers meet the story in collections of Japanese folk tales, and they already know the palace under the sea: in their own stories, the 龙宫 is the home of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, and it is where Sun Wukong takes his golden staff in Journey to the West (西游记).
Did you know?
- In Japanese, someone who comes back after a long time away and finds that the world has moved on is said to feel like Urashima Taro.
- In one older version, Taro does not just grow old when he opens the box: he turns into a crane and flies away. Cranes and turtles are both symbols of long life, and a Chinese blessing for an old person is 龟鹤延年, “may you live as long as the turtle and the crane.”
- In Japan, the way time slows down for a traveler moving close to the speed of light is often called the “Urashima effect”: the traveler comes home to find everyone else much older.