中国历史小故事英文版.docxVIP

中国历史小故事英文版 once there was a very rich man. he lived in a beautiful house, and had a beautiful garden. the rich man had a blue beard: so he was called “blue beard”. near the rich mans house there lived a poor woman. she had three sons and two beautiful girls. the name of one of the girls was ann; the name of the other was fatima. blue beard wanted to marry one of the girls, but the girls did not want to marry blue beard. a han folktale a little over two hundred years before our era, the first emperor of the chin dynasty ascended the throne under the name of shih huang. this emperor was very cruel towards his subjects, forcing people from every part of the country to come and build the great wall to protect his empire. work never stopped, day or night, with the people carrying heavy loads of earth and bricks under the overseers whips, lashes, and curses. they received very little food; the clothes they wore were threadbare. so it was scarcely to be wondered at that large numbers of them died every day. there was a young man, named wan hsi-liang, among those who had been pressed into the service of building emperor shih huangs great wall. this wan hsi-liang had a beautiful and virtuous wife, whose name was meng chiang-nu. for a long, long time after her husband was forced to leave her, meng chiang-nu had no news of him, and it saddened her to think what he must be suffering, toiling for the accursed emperor. her hatred of the wicked ruler grew apace with her longing for the husband he had torn from her side. one spring, when the flowers were in bloom and the trees budding, when the grass was a lush green, and the swallows were flying in pairs in the sky, her sorrow seemed to deepen as she walked in the fields, so she sang: there are a lot of things magical in china: the people, the culture, the stories. sometimes ordinary things seem magical, but in reality, they arent. it usually takes a great fool