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Intermediate

Children’s Story: Little Bear’s Beautiful Dream

Little Bear is sad to know his dream was just a dream… or was it?

Been a couple of months since I tossed a post out there – the latter half of 2013 was a bit of a shake-up, so please forgive the lapse. In other news, I can’t get my favorite Chinese story website, tom61.com, to load anymore, #sadface. Fingers crossed that’s a temporary glitch, but if not, I’ll mourn the loss of a fantastic learner’s website.

Practice Chinese Simplified Essays Stories for BeginnersIn the meantime, I’ve pulled something off gushi365.com.

The content of this story is for children, but the language is not beginner, and neither is the sentence structure – this is an intermediate read for sure. I say that because it feels very “fairy-tale” language-y, in the sense that sentences are formed in a more literary way, rather than in a chatty way, and there are some uncommonly-heard words, like “footprint” (脚印), etc. The tone of the story, on the other hand, is very tra-la-la, winter sparkly glitter magic.

Two quick notes on phrases here: 传来了 chuàn lái is an intermediate phrase that can be a little hard to understand, but it is used in reference to things we hear that come to us from afar. This may include voices (like hearing someone’s voice from outside your house), or noises, or smells, or a piece of news. You can use this to talk about sensations and things that come to you from no particular person or direction – from “afar” or “all around”.

掏出 tāo chū: this means to fish something out of something else. For example, to fish your phone out of your pocket, or to fish your sweatshirt out of your backpack.

下雪啦,下雪啦!一片片雪花像蒲公英一样在空中翩翩起舞,不一会儿,大地就穿上了一件洁白的衣裳。
可爱的小熊不小心扭到脚了,只得孤零零地躺在小床上。忽然,从窗外传来了欢快的歌声。小熊朝窗外看去,原来是小老鼠和小白兔在雪地里载歌载舞呢!雪地上还留下了他们可爱的小脚印。小熊心里真羡慕呀!可是,他有什么办法呢?小熊深深地叹了一口气,自言自语:“还是睡一觉吧,说不定梦里会出现奇迹!”

小熊果然做了一个好梦。他梦见一位留着长胡子的老爷爷来到了他的小屋里。老爷爷从衣袋里掏出一个小瓶子,笑眯眯地喷了喷小熊受伤的脚。小熊马上就活蹦乱跳了,快活地在雪地上和小伙伴们玩耍……

小鸟们的欢声笑语把小熊吵醒了,原来这只是一场梦。可是小熊发现自己的手里竟然有一个小瓶子!小熊拿起小瓶子往脚上一喷,受伤的脚马上就好了。这真是一瓶神水啊!从此,小熊再也不怕摔伤了。

Show English translation »
It’s snowing, it’s snowing! Flakes of snow lightly danced like dandelions in the air, and after a while, the earth wore clothes of pure white.

Cute little bear incautiously sprained his ankle, and had to lie in bed all alone. Suddenly, from outside the window came the sound of lighthearted singing. Little bear looked out the window, and [saw that it was] Little Mouse and Little White Rabbit dancing and singing! The snow still held [impressions of] their cute little footprints. Little Bear was truly envious! But what could he do? Little Bear gave a deep sigh, and said aloud to himself: “Better get some more sleep, and maybe in my dream there will be a miracle!”

Sure enough, Little bear had a good dream. In his dream, an old man with a long beard came into his room. The old man fished a little bottle out of his pocket, and smilingly sprayed [some liquid from the bottle] on Little Bear’s wounded foot. Little Bear immediately leaped up and frisked about, playing cheerfully with his [two] buddies on the snowy ground.

The happy sounds of the small birds woke Little Bear up, and [found that] actually it was all just a dream. But then he discovered that there was a small bottle in his hand! Little Bear took up the small bottle and sprayed it on his foot, and the wounded foot was immediately better! This really was a bottle of magic water! After that, Little Bear never again feared bumps and bruises.

17 replies on “Children’s Story: Little Bear’s Beautiful Dream”

“The tone of the story, on the other hand, is very tra-la-la, winter sparkly glitter magic.” Ha ha, you are just awesome.

I’m sooo glad you’re back!! I’ve really enjoyed your website (beginner material so far) and I was afraid you were done with it. I’m glad it’s not true and I’m looking forward to new reading challenges 🙂

Thank you so much! I love this website. I can finally read chinese with a little more ease and I feel like I am actually learning. A really big thank you to all the people who got together to create this awesome website. Just thank you so much! <3 😀

请问, “不一会儿” 是什么意思?

You can probably tell Chinese isn’t my first language. I’ll sing my praises for this site in English; I understand what an enormous commitment it is to maintain this site, and I hope you know just how much we all appreciate your efforts. I would be entirely lost for good reading material were it not for you.

Hi Sevenson,

Well, 一会 means “a little while” or “a short time”. In northeastern colloquial dialects, particularly Beijing dialect, “儿” is tacked on to the end of some words to… I dunno, give them flavor? It doesn’t change the meaning. So, 一会儿 still means “a little while”. 不一会儿 means “Not long after”, or literally “It wasn’t a little while” [before something happened]. Make sense?

Glad you enjoy the site! If you ever have a short passage you’d like translated, do submit!

Thanks for the answer! I happen to own several Chinese children’s books. Would you like the text from them?

all your writings are so useful. im new at learning chinese. and its kinda hard for me especially in conversing. please keep on posting. thanks a lot!

That’s awsome I mean imagin if that happend to you and that happend… that would be a miricle come true. This can actualy happen in real life it’s happend to my dad before. I’m really enjoying this website thanks for all the effort you put into this THANKS ONCE A GAIN

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