Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Wu Song and the Tiger
武松打虎
Wu Song and the Tiger (武松打虎, Wǔ Sōng dǎ hǔ) is a story from Water Margin, the Chinese classic by Shi Nai'an, retold in simple Mandarin as a 4-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from Shi Nai'an's classic novel The Water Margin: a traveler drinks eighteen bowls at an inn whose sign says three is the limit, laughs off a warning, and meets a man-eating tiger on Jingyang Ridge at dusk.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — Tells how one traveler, eighteen bowls of wine and one enormous tiger met on Jingyang Ridge.
- Wu Song · 武松 — A big, bold young traveler on his way home to see his brother, who laughs at danger and never says no to another bowl.
- The Innkeeper · 店家 — The owner of the little inn below the ridge, very proud of his wine and very sure that three bowls is the limit.
- The Tiger · 老虎 — The hungry tiger of Jingyang Ridge, which has three favorite moves and thinks every traveler is dinner.
- The Hunter · 猎人 — A jumpy local hunter who hides in a tiger skin, dreads the magistrate's beatings, and can't believe what he sees.
- Wu Dalang · 武大郎 — Wu Song's kind older brother, who has moved to Yanggu and is overjoyed to see him.
4 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: Three Bowls and No More
三碗不过冈
A thirsty traveler stops at a little inn whose banner warns that three bowls of its wine will keep anyone off the ridge. Wu Song orders a fourth.
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Chapter 2: Up Jingyang Ridge
上景阳冈
Wu Song is sure the tiger is just a trick to keep him at the inn overnight. Then, near the top of the ridge, he finds a notice he can't laugh off.
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Chapter 3: The Broken Staff
棍子断了
The tiger has three famous moves, Wu Song has one wooden staff, and the sun has already set on Jingyang Ridge.
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Chapter 4: Two More Tigers?
两只老虎
Two striped shapes rise out of the dark grass, and Wu Song has no strength left to fight. What happens next surprises everyone, including Wu Song.
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Key words in Wu Song and the Tiger
Behind the story
Wu Song and the Tiger (武松打虎) is one of the best-loved episodes of The Water Margin (水浒传), the 14th-century novel usually credited to Shi Nai'an (施耐庵) and one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The novel follows 108 outlaw heroes of the Song dynasty, and this is the adventure that makes Wu Song famous.
Almost every Chinese reader knows it. Children meet it at school in a fifth-grade textbook lesson called 景阳冈, storytellers have performed it for generations (Shandong clapper storytelling, 山东快书, told Wu Song's tales so often that people once simply called it 武老二, “Wu the Second”), and the inn's banner, 三碗不过冈, is a line nearly everyone recognizes.
Did you know?
- In the novel, the tiger is usually called 大虫, “the big bug”, an old everyday word for a tiger.
- The novel gives the tiger just three moves: a pounce, a heave of its back legs, and a sweep of its tail as stiff as an iron bar. When all three miss, the book says, the tiger has already lost half its fighting spirit.
- Wu Song is the second son of his family, so people call him 武二郎. Later in the novel he disguises himself as a wandering Buddhist ascetic and becomes known as 行者, “the Pilgrim”.