As a Child, I Read Fairy Tales; He Read “Outlaws of the Marsh.”

by | Apr 12, 2015 | books, China, Culture | 30 comments

 

image by TZA, flickr creative commons

image by TZA, flickr creative commons

In my imagination, the inside of my brain is this complicated structure I’ve built up over the years. Some of its floors, hallways, and towers are basically the same as in everyone else’s brains. The rest are my own, painstakingly constructed and connected, they’re based on everything I’ve ever thought, seen, heard, experienced, or read.

If you and I have read many of the same books, then the portions of our brain-edifices that store those stories might look similar—that is, if we filed the stories in the same places.

Jack and Jill by Dorothy M. Wheeler, c. 1920

Jack and Jill by Dorothy M. Wheeler, c. 1920

Some of the earliest stories I remember were the short-short stories found in nursery rhymes: Jack and Jill, Humpty Dumpty, and Little Bo Peep among others.

Next came the simple stories for young children that, strangely, all had in common the number three: Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

It wasn’t long before I heard and later read what for me were the stories at the heart of children’s literature: fairy tales.

Little Red Riding Hood

Hansel and Gretel

Cinderella

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Rapunzel

The Princess and the Pea

Jack and the Beanstalk

Sleeping Beauty

Beauty and the Beast

Puss in Boots

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Frog Prince

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and

The Twelve Dancing Princesses (one of my favorites because the illustrations in my book were so beautiful).

Alice_in_Wonderland by Jessie Wilcox Smith

Later, I read longer stories. You may have read many of the same ones:

The Three Musketeers

Treasure Island

Alice in Wonderland

Heidi

Kidnapped

Little Women

Black Beauty

Robin Hood

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Wizard of Oz

King Arthur and His Knights

The Secret Garden

Peter Pan

Little House in the Big Woods

Then I married someone who had built an entirely different story-edifice in his brain. I can’t tell you everything my husband, Eugene, read or didn’t read. But I do know that for the first ten years of his life, the reading material for a Chinese boy, living in China and surrounded by war, was totally different.

Despite the war, Eugene was told many Chinese fables, folktales, and stories taken from classical Chinese literature. If you’re interested in Chinese folktales, here’s a collection in English. Be sure to read “The Widow and Her Son” on page 22. It’s a touching story that is 2000 years old.

During the Japanese occupation of China, my mother-in-law made up for the scarcity of children’s books by reading to her young children from these two classics almost as soon as they could talk:

Outlaws of the Marsh and

Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

If you’re seriously interested in China, you should read both of them. I recommend starting with Outlaws of the Marsh (also called Water Margins), a fictitious story based on actual events in the twelfth century. It’s more fun, and even though it’s 1605 pages long in my translation, you don’t need to read all of it to have a good experience.

Outlaws of the MarshThe outlaws of the title are a delightful mix of heroes, villains, and buffoons who have banded together to escape capture. They scheme, murder, get drunk, fall in love, and fight for honor and justice.

Here’s a comment from the review of Outlaws of the Marsh on Amazon by Gregory S. Combs: “If you read one saga in your life, you would die happy having read Outlaws of the Marsh.”

Romance of the Three KingdomsRomance of the Three Kingdoms is more serious. It tells of a period in Chinese history in which the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- A.D. 220) was on the verge of collapse. The three heroes and later their children are brave and clever. They also have their faults. My favorite character is Zhuge Liang, a brilliant military tactician.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms begins with the following comment: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

Did you read many of the same stories I did when you were growing up?

Do you have a friend or spouse whose reading history is different from yours? If so, how does it impact your relationship and communication?

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30 Comments

  1. samkok911

    I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. My girlfriend read Harry Potter. We have many problem in communication. 😀

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Hi, Samkok. On the other hand, both of you are broadening your horizons. Best of luck.

      Reply
  2. Hari Qhuang

    I did not read much before I got the free school library membership card when I was 9 or 10.
    Most of the stories I heard when I was a kid was orally told by my grandma or other “elders” in the family and neighborhood.

    Those stories were not always “whole”, because the elders loved to discuss about the characters individually.
    For example, instead of telling me the whole story of the Romance of the Three Kingdom, they would tell me about Zhu Ge Liang (Gong Ming), who was the “Einstein” of his era.

    I remember being teased by my friends a lot because I knew very little about Cinderella and other characters from “western” tales.

    I guess it was what motivated me to read a lot when I got the library membership card, so that I could catch up! 😀

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I love hearing that you heard parts of the Chinese classics orally from your grandma and other elders. Long epic tales like Romance of the Three Kingdoms are probably best told in small pieces. Zhu Ge Liang was my favorite character. He was so smart.

      You were one student who made good use of your free school library card.

      Reply
  3. Silver in the Barn

    I read all the usual suspects including the entire “Little House” series. Remember Caddie Woodlawn? Oh, I loved her stories. My mother says I was a difficult child (imagine that) until I learned to read. I started reading adult books fairly early – by around sixth grade, I think. One of my first was Gone with the Wind. Surely I didn’t grasp it all, but I do remember loving it. I like the quote “No two people read the same book.”

    Reply
  4. livelytwist

    With this post, you’ve whetted my appetite for Chinese folklore. Time o time! 🙂

    This is an interesting observation:
    “If you and I have read many of the same books, then the portions of our brain-edifices that store those stories might look similar—that is, if we filed the stories in the same places.”

    My sister and I read a story and when we talked about it afterwards, I wondered if we had read the same book. She interpreted the narrative differently, saw things in it I hadn’t seen. I don’t know that we ended up filing the story in the same part of our brain, but we definitely read it through different filters.

    But we were adults. As kids we read the same novels as you did. I wonder if we would have interpreted them differently . . .

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I’d hate to have a cognitive scientist read this post. It’s so unscientific.

      Now that we’re adults, my sister and I seldom read the same book. When we were children, though, we read most of the same things. I suppose our interpretations were pretty close in those days.

      You wonder if you and I would have had different interpretations of the stories we both read. Probably, but at least those stories give us a shared framework.

      Reply
  5. Vicki

    The reason I am here is one of those surfing adventures that happens on the Internet. My search was a futile attempt to find the old address for Marycrest Hall – Seattle U. I was there in the school year 1957-58. I would be most grateful if you could fill in the blank for me.

    I will need to come back and read more of your writings. My childhood reading was more country: Susan and Arabella, Pioneers, Thunderhead and My Friend Flicka, and naturally Laura Ingalls Wilder was a favorite.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Hi, Vicki. I don’t see the address of Marycrest Hall on the internet. I wonder if Swedish Hospital expanded to take over the site. If I find anything in my old letters, I’ll let you know.

      I should have included Laura Ingalls Wilder. Besides reading the Little House stories myself, I had one teacher who had us put our heads on our desks after recess every day while she read from the books.

      Reply
      • Vicki

        Yes – Marycrest Hall no longer exists – and it certainly may be that Swedish has absorbed it all. Thank you so much for trying, and if you should uncover it at some future date, I will be most appreciative!!!!

        I love your teacher reading from Laura’s writings. It also reminds me of the special moments in grade school – one room for grades 4,5,and 6. The teacher taught us to knit – we made squares and she put them together into blankets for Children’s Hospital. She also was a baseball fan, and so we caught all the weekday games of the World Series, and she taught us how to keep track of what happened and when.

        Grins
        Vicki

        Reply
  6. evelyneholingue

    Iread many of the books you read, Nicki, although most in French. Since my husband is also French and we are the same age we’ve read many common books, although he favored some action-driven stories while I loved historical fiction. I haven’t read the books your husband read. My interest in Asian-based literature is very American, I’m afraid. I love several American-Asian authors. Amy Tan being only one of them. So I must change that and I should check out Outlaws of the Marsh, now that you’ve tempted me!
    I think that men and women read different books and of course our place of birth plays a role too. Probably less now in a much more open world. Another great post, Nicki.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Maxine Hong Kingston, who wrote Woman Warrior, was the first Chinese-American author I read. That was a long time ago. A more contemporary book by a Chinese author that I enjoyed last year is The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa.

      I agree that men and women have different tastes in books, and the differences start early. They may hear the same nursery rhymes and nursery tales, but before long their tastes begin to diverge.

      Reply
  7. Marta

    I haven’t asked my boyfriend what he read, but I think there was a lot of Japanese manga, which I don’t like xD

    I liked the fable about the widow, I translated several similar stories when I was in school. Each story would have their own “saying”, a sentence of 4 characters that is part of Chinese language still now.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      You’re probably more familiar with Chinese stories than I am. But it’s my impression that the purpose of many Chinese tales is to teach a lesson. Maybe that’s why they end with the four-character saying, something you can memorize and take with you so you’ll know how to live a good life.

      Reply
  8. suzicate

    It’s interesting the difference you and your husband brought into your marriage to teach one another, what a beautiful story that is!

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Thank you for the comment, Suzicate. Some people may look at differences as problems to be overcome, and maybe in some ways they are. But I think a better way to look at it is to think of differences as opportunities to learn, to grow, and to share with each other.

      Reply
  9. nrhatch

    I did read the same stories as you plus Dr. Seuss, Nancy Drew mysteries, Mary Poppins, LOTS of biographies (Florence Nightingale, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Molly Pitcher), Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mary Stewart, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Wilkie Collins, Perry Mason, The Crucible, etc..

    Going to the library or bookmobile to pick out books was the BEST!

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      When I was in fourth grade, I became interested in biographies of women. Florence Nightingale and Sacajawea are the ones I remember now. Somehow I missed Dr. Seuss until my kids were born.

      My grandma lived three blocks from the town’s Carnegie library. When we stayed with her, we walked (never drove) to the library about once a week. It was a real outing.

      Reply
  10. Constance - Foreign Sanctuary

    I read the same fairy tales as a child as you did, Nicki. Plus, I actually revisited these fairy tales when I started teaching and shared them with my students who were five years old at the time. Most were familiar with the popular ones but there were some which were new to them.

    And believe it or not, these same fairy tales aided me in learning Chinese. I remember discovering several English learning fairy tale books at the school with a CD and the last track contain a Chinese translation of the book. It was by listening to one of these translations that I came to the realization of how much my Chinese learning had progressed as I could understand every word of the fairy tale.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Chinese is such a difficult language. It must have been terrifically satisfying to have reached that point, Constance.

      Chinese folk tales have lots of frightening characters and events, more than enough, I dare say, to prepare five year olds for the Brothers Grimm.

      Reply
  11. autumnashbough

    I read all of your books, plus tons of Science Fiction and Fantasy. And “Anne of Green Gables” — my favorite! The YA craze hadn’t really started when I was growing up. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. There were fewer books, but the books were perhaps better. (Except for the Nancy Drews! Sorry, Ms. Crimmins.)

    My Chinese-American guy read nothing that wasn’t t assigned to him by his teachers. He’s very, smart and very good at math and considers Calculus easy. However, when we visit my nieces and nephews and I realize he never read Dr. Seuss, I’m always floored. All those picture books are new to him. So are adult books — he never read any Tolkien or Lois McMaster Bujold until I handed him the books. Inconceivable! (Yes, I read “The Princess Bride,” too.)

    He’s still not a huge reader — I have a hard time getting him to even read my blog, and he has a starring role! But at least we now have a few similar brain structures.

    We’d have more neural pathways in common if I watched more crappy TV shows and movies with explosions. And that’s not going to happen. We will just have to hope opposites keep attracting…

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      So funny, Autumn. Cultural differences aside, there’s always gender. My son-in-law, the one with suspense-thrillers and military history books beside his bed, the one who loves movies with explosions, made the mistake last year of going to a movie that turned out to be a musical. When someone started singing, he just about jumped up and ran out.

      Reply
  12. francisguenette

    The lavish use of illustrations in this post makes it so rich. We are definitely formed by those early reading years. So, true.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      It’s fun finding illustrations, Francis, although it does take time. The two last ones are from covers of books I own. My iPhone did a pretty good job of capturing them. I was surprised to have found that bright, humorous brain illustration on flickr creative commons. Even though I wasn’t talking about right brain/left brain, I liked it enough to use it anyway.

      Reply
  13. Kate Crimmins

    I read the same books as you. I did not like the Grimm Brothers fairy tales. I found them violent and sad but read adventure series like Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Bobbsey Twins. By the time I was 12 or 13 I graduated to adult fiction (which not surprisingly was just as violent and sad as Grimm).

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I also read and enjoyed Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Bobbsey Twins. I must have read versions of the Grimm Brothers fairy tales that were cleaned up a bit. (I was a big fan of anything Disney.) The illustrations and movies helped. The witch who wanted to eat Hansel and Gretel was definitely despicable, but in the end, Gretel pushed her into the oven, shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh, well. I guess that is awfully violent, but the story has such wonderful drama, and the illustrations of the gingerbread house were so beautiful.

      Later, when I was taking a course in Early Childhood Education, I read “The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettleheim. He convinced me. But now, having three grandchildren, I can see that scary fairy tales aren’t for everyone.

      Reply
  14. L. Marie

    Nicki, I read the same books you read. Later I read some of the stories of China, Japan, and India.

    I used to get teased a lot when I was a kid for reading so voraciously. But reading fueled my desire to write fiction.

    Neither of my brothers was a great reader. My older brother majored in math, so he delighted in numbers and preferred to read the newspaper. Guess we’re all wired differently.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I always liked to read, but I didn’t get teased about it. I do remember my mom telling me more than once to put down my book and go out and play. When we were young, my sister liked to read, but she preferred to have me read to her.

      Reply

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