translated and retold by frederick h. martens

The fairy tales and legends of olden China are as ancient as the land itself. They have an oriental glow which can only be found in the orient. They glitter like precious stones, shine like gold and shimmer like multicoloured silks fluttering in the breeze. They contain oriental wealth of fantastic and supernatural action, not too dissimilar to the tales in the “Thousand and One Nights”.  The 73 stories herein embrace “Nursery Fairy Tales,” “Legends of the Gods,” “Tales of Saints and Magicians,” “Nature and Animal Tales,” “Ghost Stories,” “Historic Fairy Tales,” and “Literary Fairy Tales”.

Like the “Arabian Nights,” they will fascinate the young reader and amply repay the attention of the older generations as well. Some are exquisitely poetic, such as “The Flower-Elves,” “The Lady of the Moon” or “The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maiden”; others like “How Three Heroes Came By Their Deaths Because Of Two Peaches,” carry us back dramatically and powerfully to the Chinese age of Chivalry. The summits of fantasy are scaled in the quasi-religious dramas of “The Ape Sun Wu Kung” and “Notscha,” or the weird sorceries unfolded in “The Kindly Magician.” Delightful ghost stories, with happy endings, such as “A Night on the Battlefield” and “The Ghost Who Was Foiled,” are paralleled with such idyllic love-tales as that of “Rose of Evening,” or such Lilliputian fancies as “The King of the Ants” and “The Little Hunting Dog.”  

It is quite safe to say that these Chinese fairy tales will give equal pleasure to the old as well as the young. They have been retold simply, with no changes in style or expression beyond such details of presentation which differences between oriental and occidental viewpoints at times compel. It is the writer’s hope that others may take as much pleasure in reading them as he did in their translation.
33% of the net profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities.