Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #1: The Yellow Bucket
April 18th, 2009 | View Comments
Remember when Yvonne was commenting on not having any fun Chinese kid lit growing up?
Problem solved. On a recent trip to Taiwan, we bought quite a few books for us to practice our Chinese reading skills. Some are classic stories known to Americans while others are new material. This recent acquisition of reading material has inspired me to create a new feature: Chinese Kid Lit.
This week’s book is titled:
黃色水桶
Huang2 se4 shui3 tong3
The Yellow Bucket.
In the book, 小狐狸 xiao3 hu2 li2 (Little Fox), finds a yellow bucket in the woods. He really wants a bucket because all his friends have buckets, including 小熊 xiao3 xiong2 (Little Bear) and 小兔子 xiao3 tu4 zi5 (Little Rabbit). 小熊 and 小兔子 convince 小狐狸 that since the bucket was found, he cannot just take it outright. So, they decide to wait a week and see if its owner claims it. If not, then 小狐狸 can finally take home the yellow bucket.
Apparently, this fox has no life as he goes into the woods each day to play with the bucket. At the end of each day, he sets it down and goes home. Through his play, he swings it, throws it around, fills it with water, etc. One day, he goes to the woods and finds his precious bucket wet from a heavy rainstorm. This makes him so upset that he wants to cry!
Seriously?
It’s a WATER bucket. It’s supposed to get WET! In fact, the first character in the word 水桶 (bucket), actually means water.
The rest of the story gets even more annoying as Little Fox continues to whine and mope about not having his own bucket. (If you want the bucket so badly, just take the darn thing!) He gets so obsessed that he dreams about the bucket at night. In one particular dream, he throws the bucket in the air and it flies away into the moonlight. On the final day, Little Fox goes to retrieve his bucket to find it missing. It’s unclear whether his dream was actually Little Fox sleepwalking or if the bucket’s rightful owner picked it up on the seventh day.
The animal kids in the story need lives… and parents. Who lets their kids run around in the woods every day unsupervised? Not to mention the emotional issues this Little Fox has that he’s willing to cry over the fact that it rained in a bucket that doesn’t even belong to him.
More stories about Little Fox to follow in future posts. Come join us as we delve further into this emotionally needy character who clearly has some psychological issues. Who said children’s literature was boring?
Peter posted this on April 18th, 2009 @ 8:15am in Books, Chinese, Peter's Chinese Kid Lit, Reading | Permalink to "Peter’s Chinese Kid Lit #1: The Yellow Bucket"
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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If I may offer a suggestion: I very much enjoy the 卡米 books. 卡米看医生, for example. I’m sure you can order them over amazon.cn. The ones I have are simplified characters, though. Not sure what you guys are learning. Anyhow, give them a try, they’re a pleasure to read