China
Explore Chinese folk tales, legends and literary adventures, including stories preserved through older translated collections. Source notes identify the version followed and distinguish its imagined world from historical or religious commentary.
80 stories are in this region right now.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Mysterious Buddhist Robe
Two shabby strangers bring a fairy robe for the priest who will lead an emperor’s service for the dead, and the priest is sent west with a fiery monkey guide.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Monk of the Yangtze-Kiang
A rain-dragon loses a bet and his head, and the guilt-stricken emperor sends a monk who was set adrift as a baby to bring sutras back from India.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away
A whirlwind carries a girl to the top of a towering pagoda, where a polite student who is secretly a winged ogre keeps her until her brother comes.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Miserly Farmer
A farmer refuses a ragged monk a single pear, then gapes as the monk grows a magic pear tree in the market and hands its fruit to the whole crowd.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Magic Cask
A farmer digs up a jar that copies whatever falls into it, grows rich on coins, then loses everything through the way he treats his grandfather.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Lady of the Moon
Tschang O swallows her husband’s herb of immortality and floats up to the moon, where a Tang emperor later visits her halls of crystal.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Little Hunting Dog
Tiny horsemen hunt the fleas in a scholar’s room and ride away, leaving behind an ant-sized hunting dog that becomes his most treasured companion.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Kingdom of the Ogres
A merchant shipwrecked among ogres wins his life by cooking for them, marries an ogre-girl, and years later his son brings the whole family home.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The King of the Ants
In a haunted house a scholar watches a tiny king hunt on his bed and fish in his ink saucer, until the little king’s boasting goes too far.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The King of Huai Nan
Eight old men who can turn into boys teach a Han prince their magic arts, and when rebellion comes they carry him off to immortality.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden
A golden cow flies a poor herd boy to the Sea of Heaven, where he marries the Weaving Maiden until she draws the Silver River across the sky.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Kindly Magician
A spendthrift saved three times by a mysterious old man must keep perfect silence while the old man brews the elixir of life, whatever visions come.