YANG CHENXI, an 8-year-old from Zhejiang Province’s Huzhou, recently spent half of her summer holidays with her grandparents in the countryside in Suqian, Jiangsu Province.

    Every night before bed, the girl, a fan of Disney cartoons and “My Little Pony,” begged her grandmother, Li Yuehua, to tell her a story.

    “I told her stories about how bad people who mistreated good people were punished, and stories about illiterate but cocky people who made mistakes when they tried to read Chinese characters. My granddaughter loved the stories and laughed a lot,” says Li.

    Thankfully, for Chinese children like Yang, Western fairy tales like “The Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella” are not the only options when it comes to bedtime stories. In recent years, Chinese writers have been using tradition, folk stories and legends to create books for children.

    Wang Quangen, a professor of children’s literature at Beijing Normal University, is currently working on a series of six books based on stories from such Chinese classics as “In Search of the Supernatural” from the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), “Classic of Mountains and Seas” from the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), “Miscellaneous Morsels From Youyang” from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and “Strange Stories From a Studio” from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

    For the series, called “Chinese Fairy Tales Passed on From Generation to Generation,” Wang has chosen 217 stories and is rendering them into language children easily understand. “We need to pick stories that will not only interest children today, but also cater to current tastes and values. Through these books, children should be able to see the virtues and the wisdom of the ancient Chinese,” says Wang.

    Wang Lin, who has a PhD in children’s literature and is a promoter of children’s reading, says that in a globalized world — where language does not indicate nationality — the cultural genes of a nation are represented by the songs people sing, the books they read and the stories they listen to when they are young.

    Last year, a set of three books based on mythical creatures in the Forbidden City (also known as the Palace Museum) was released and became very popular with children.

    The series, called “Mythical Creatures in the Forbidden City,” features an 11-year-old girl called Li Xiaoyu whose mother worked in the Forbidden City; a white cat called Lihua that’s said to be a descendant of the cats raised by the emperors’ concubines; and mythical creatures that people see in the old palace, such as the stone statues on the roofs.

    The writer, 37-year-old Chang Yi, lived near the palace as a child, and she grew up listening to tales and legends of the Forbidden City. For her, the ancient palace was a big amusement park full of fabled beings.

    Speaking about the characters featured in her books, Chang says that, in order to better understand and present the characteristics of the creatures, she referred to such works as “The Classic of Mountains and Seas” and “In Search of the Supernatural.”

    She also created new plots for these mythical creatures to make the old legends and tales more acceptable for a modern readership.

    The books have sold more than 240,000 copies. (China Daily)