CRI听力:Chinese Folktales Revives in Picture Books

At the launch event of the "Chinese Folk Fairy Tale Series", many children became absorbed in a story called "Long Hair Sister".

The "Chinese Folk Fairy Tale" collection is composed of four picture books, namely "The Golden Hair", "The Long Hair Sister", "The Fish Girl" and "Two Brothers."

These four stories are adaptations of four traditional folktales, written by Xianghua, animation screenwriter and picture book writer.

Xianghua's father used to work for China's Folk Literature study Association, which would tour around Chinese villages to collect popular folk tales.

"One day as I was preparing to move house, I found that I still had all the materials of the folktales collected in the 50s and 60s. I read them again and felt that I should let people know about the stories."

Since many of the folktales were often spread via word of mouth, they could not be directly printed into a book. Xiang rewrote four specific stories to cater to the tastes of modern, young readers.

The four stories convey the message that human beings should live in harmony with nature.

The best way for children to understand such stories is via pictures, hence why Xiang went about making his picture books.

Xiang received support from Yang Zhong, a teacher of the Picture Book Studio of China Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Yang studied the art of picture books in Japan for many years and talks about their use in teaching children.

"Japanese picture books used a lot of folktales as part of their content. So, children there can be exposed to a lot of local folktales. However, when I was back to China, I found it extremely difficult to find classic and quality pictures books on Chinese folktales."

Xiang Hua, writer of the four books says the Picture Book Studio will continue making the Chinese Folk Fairy Series.

"We can imagine, after four years, when the number of books produced increases from 4 to 14 or 18, it will be clear that China has good stories and fairly tales that can compete with Han Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. What's more, these stories are illustrated with the help of beautiful art work."

For CRI, this is Zhang Ru.