Traditional Chinese legend, retold in simple Mandarin
Ye Xian, the Chinese Cinderella
叶限
Ye Xian, the Chinese Cinderella (叶限, Yè Xiàn) is a fairy tale by Duan Chengshi, retold in simple Mandarin as a 5-chapter story with audio for learners at about HSK 2 (Elementary).
Retold from Duan Chengshi's ninth-century Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang: a lonely girl, a golden-eyed fish, a lost golden shoe and a king from across the sea, in one of the oldest written Cinderella stories.
Meet the voices
- Narrator · 旁白 — Tells Ye Xian's story plainly and warmly, like a grandfather passing on a tale he heard as a boy.
- Ye Xian · 叶限 — A gentle, clever girl who works from dawn to dark for her stepmother; her only friend is a fish with golden eyes.
- Stepmother · 后妈 — Ye Xian's stepmother, sharp of eye and tongue, who wants every good thing for herself and her own daughter.
- Stepsister · 妹妹 — The stepmother's spoiled daughter, who calls Ye Xian big sister and notices more than her mother thinks.
- The old man · 老人 — A white-haired hermit who comes down the hillside at dusk and seems to know all about Ye Xian's fish.
- The king · 国王 — The young king of Tuohan, a kingdom across the sea, who can't stop wondering who owns a tiny golden shoe.
5 chapters, one journey
Chapter 1: The Fish in the Pond
池塘里的鱼
Ye Xian works from dawn to dark for a stepmother who never smiles. Her only friend lives in a quiet pond in the hills, and it comes up for no one else.
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Chapter 2: The Fish Is Gone
鱼不见了
Suddenly the stepmother is kind: a new coat for Ye Xian, and a long walk to fetch water in the far eastern hills. Why does she want Ye Xian's old coat?
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Chapter 3: The Fish Bones
鱼骨头
Crying by the empty pond at dusk, Ye Xian meets a white-haired old man who says her fish was no ordinary fish, and that she must keep its bones.
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Chapter 4: The Golden Shoes
金鞋
It's the night of the Cave Festival, and Ye Xian has been told to stay home and watch the fruit in the yard. But the fish bones are still listening.
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Chapter 5: The King's Search
国王在找她
Far across the sea, a young king holds a golden shoe so small that no girl in his kingdom can wear it. He sets sail to find its owner.
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Key words in Ye Xian, the Chinese Cinderella
Behind the story
Ye Xian's story comes from Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang (酉阳杂俎), a Tang-dynasty book of strange tales and curious facts compiled by the scholar Duan Chengshi (段成式) in the ninth century. Duan noted that he heard it from an old servant of his family who came from the far south.
It is one of the oldest written Cinderella stories in the world, more than eight hundred years older than Perrault's. There is no fairy godmother and no palace ball: the magic lives in the bones of a fish, Ye Xian slips away to her hill community's Cave Festival (洞节), and the man who searches for the owner of a tiny golden shoe is the king of a land across the sea.
Did you know?
- In Chinese, Perrault's heroine is called 灰姑娘 (huī gūniang), “the ash girl.” Ye Xian is often called the Chinese Cinderella.
- The original tale goes on after the wedding: the king asks the fish bones for so much treasure that after a year they stop answering him.
- Kingfisher feathers were treasured in old China. Craftsmen set the shimmering blue-green feathers into hairpins and headdresses, an art called 点翠 (diǎncuì).