Chinese Teacher: Telling a Chinese Story

As a Chinese teacher, I will tell you an interesting Chinese story, which is “猴子摘桃(hou2 zi5 zhai1 tao2)”.

From the title, we can easily get the English meaning “the monkey picks peaches”. In Chinese primary schools, this story is usually emphasized by the Chinese teachers, because it has revealed an important idea.

So, let us come to the content of it. One day, there was a monkey passing through a corn field. He picked two big corns and moved on. And then he came to a big peach tree with a lot of fresh peaches on it. He threw the corns down and picked two peaches. Later on, a land of watermelons appeared in front of him. Out of great delight, he placed the peaches down and went to the watermelon land and got a big watermelon. When he was carrying the melon home, a rabbit ran across him. Excitedly, he placed the melon down and ran after the rabbit at once. However, it was getting darker and darker and finally the rabbit jumped into a bush and disappeared. What did the monkey do next? Of course, he just went home with nothing in his hand. That is the story of “Monkey picks peaches”. What idea have you got after reading this story?

Usually, when the students read this story, the mandarin teacher would ask the students the main idea of the story. Actually, it mainly tells us not to be half-hearted especially when we are doing something important. Only when we have finished one thing can we get to start another thing, or we will get nothing finally as the monkey above.

Last week, Tom was learning Chinese at home, but he was absent-minded and wanted to play the guitar. His Chinese tutor asked him to be focused and said, “不要拣了芝麻丢了西瓜(bu2 yao4 jian3 le5 zhi1 ma5 diu1 le5 xi1 gua1)”. 

source: http://smile1xia.jigsy.com/entries/education/chinese-teacher-telling-a-chinese-story