章节正文
The Chinese Boy and Girl
by Isaac Taylor Headland
PREFACE
No thorough study of Chinese child life can be made until
the wall of Chinese exclusiveness is broken down and the
homes of the East are thrown open to the people of the
West. Glimpses of that life however, are available, sufficient
in number and character to give a fairly good idea of
what it must be. The playground is by no means always
hidden, least of all when it is the street. The Chinese
nurse brings her Chinese rhymes, stories and games into
the foreigner's home for the amusement of its little ones.
Chinese kindergarten methods and appliances have no
superior in their ingenuity and their ability to interest, as
well as instruct. In the matter of travelling shows and
jugglers also, no country is better supplied, and these are
chiefly for the entertainment of the little ones.
To the careful observer of these different phases it
becomes apparent that the Chinese child is well supplied
with methods of exercise and amusement, also that he has
much in common with the children of other lands. A large
collection of toys shows many duplicates of those common
in the West, and from the nursery rhymes of at least two
out of the eighteen provinces it appears that the Chinese
nursery is rich in Mother Goose. As a companion to
the "Chinese Mother Goose," this book seeks to show
that the same sunlight fills the homes of both East and
West. If it also leads their far-away mates to look upon
the Chinese Boy and Girl as real little folk, human like
themselves, and thus think more kindly of them, its mission
will have been accomplished.
CONTENTS
THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES
CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE
GAMES PLAYED BY BOYS
GAMES PLAYED BY GIRLS
THE TOYS CHILDREN PLAY WITH
BLOCK GAMES--KINDERGARTEN
CHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTS
JUVENILE JUGGLING
STORIES TOLD TO CHILDREN
THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES
It is a mistake to suppose that any one nation or people
has exclusive right to Mother Goose. She is an omnipresent
old lady. She is Asiatic as well as European or American.
Wherever there are mothers, grandmothers, and
nurses there are Mother Gooses,--or; shall we say, Mother
Geese--for I am at a loss as to how to pluralize this old
dame. She is in India, whence I have rhymes from her,
of which the following is a sample:
Heh, my baby! Ho, my baby!
See the wild, ripe plum,
And if you'd like to eat a few,
I'll buy my baby some.
She is in Japan. She has taught the children there to put
their fingers together as we do for "This is the church,
this is the steeple," when she says:
A bamboo road,
With a floor-mat siding,
Children are quarrelling,
And parents chiding,
the children" being represented by the fingers and the
"parents" by the thumbs. She is in China. I have more
than 600 rhymes from her Chinese collection. Let me tell
you how I got them.
One hot day during my summer vacation, while sitting
on the veranda of a house among the hills, fifteen miles
west of Peking, my friend, Mrs. C. H. Fenn, said to me:
"Have you noticed those rhymes, Mr. Headland?"
"What rhymes?" I inquired.
"The rhymes Mrs. Yin is repeating to Henry."
"No, I have not noticed them. Ask her to repeat that one again."
Mrs. Fenn did so, and the old nurse repeated the following rhyme,
very much in the tone of, "The goblins 'll git you if you don't
look out."
He climbed up the candlestick,
The little mousey brown,
To steal and eat tallow,
And he couldn't get down.
He called for his grandma,
But his grandma was in town,
So he doubled up into a wheel,
And rolled himself down.
I asked the nurse to repeat it again, more slowly, and I
wrote it down together with the translation.
Now, I think it must be admitted that there is more in
this rhyme to commend it to the public than there is in
"Jack and Jill." If when that remarkable young couple
went for the pail of water, Master Jack had carried it
himself, he would have been entitled to some credit for
gallantry, or if in cracking his crown he had fallen so as to
prevent Miss Jill from "tumbling," or even in such a way
as to break her fall and make it easier for her, there would
have been some reason for the popularity of such a record.
As it is, there is no way to account for it except the fact
that it is simple and rhythmic and children like it. This
rhyme, however, in the original, is equal to "Jack and Jill" in
rhythm and rhyme, has as good a story, exhibits a more scientific
tumble, with a less tragic result, and contains as good a moral
as that found in "Jack Sprat."
It is as popular all over North China as "Jack and Jill" is
throughout Great Britain and America. Ask any Chinese child if he
knows the "Little Mouse," and he reels it off to you as readily
as an English-speaking child does "Jack and Jill." Does he like
it? It is a part of his life. Repeat it to him, giving one word
incorrectly, and he will resent it as strenuously as your little
boy or girl would if you said,
Jack and Jill
Went DOWN the hill
Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differently
from the way he learned it and see what the result will be.
Having obtained this rhyme, I asked Mrs. Yin if she
knew any more. She smiled and said she knew "lots of
them." I induced her to tell them to me, promising her
five hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme she
could give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted to
secure all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I had
rhymes which ranged from the two extremes of the keenest
parental affection to those of unrefined filthiness. The
latter class however came not from the nurses but from
the children themselves.
When I had finished with her I had a dozen or more. I
soon learned these so that I could repeat them in the original,
which gave me an entering wedge to the heart of every
man, woman or child I met.
One day, as I rode through a broom-corn field on the
back of a little donkey, my feet almost dragging on the
ground, I was repeating some of these rhymes, when the
driver running at my side said:
"Ha, you know those children's songs, do you?"
"Yes do you know any?"
"Lots of them," he answered.
"Lots of them" is a favorite expression with the Chinese.
"Tell me some."
"Did you ever hear this one?"
"Fire-fly, fire-fly,
Come from the hill,
Your father and mother
Are waiting here still.
They've brought you some sugar,
Some candy, and meat,
For baby to eat."
I at once dismounted and wrote it down, and promised
him five hundred cash apiece for every new one he could
give me. In this way, going to and from the city, in
conversation with old nurses or servants, personal friends,
teachers, parents or children, or foreign children who had
been born in China and had learned rhymes from their
nurses, I continued to gather them during the entire
vacation, and when autumn came I had more than fifty of the
most common and consequently the best rhymes known
in and about Peking.
A few months after I returned to the city a circular was
sent around asking for subscriptions to a volume of Pekinese
Folklore, published by Baron Vitali, Interpreter at the
Italian legation, which, on examination, proved to be exactly
what I wanted. He had collected about two hundred and
fifty rhymes, had made a literal--not metrical--translation
and had issued them in book form without expurgation.
Others learned of my collection, and rhymes began to come
to me from all parts of the empire. Dr. Arthur H. Smith,
the well-known author of "Chinese Characteristics" gave
me a collection of more than three hundred made in Shantung,
among which were rhymes similar to those we had
found in Peking. Still later I received other versions of these
same rhymes from my little friend, Miss Chalfant, collected
in a different part of Shantung from that occupied by Dr.
Smith. I then had no fewer than five versions of
"This little pig went to market,"
each having some local coloring not found in the other,
proving that the fingers and toes furnish children with the
same entertainment in the Orient as in the Occident, and
that the rhyme is widely known throughout China.
These nursery rhymes have never been printed in the
Chinese language, but like our own Mother Goose before
the year 1719, if we may credit the Boston story, they are
carried in the minds and hearts of the children. Here arose
the first difficulty we experienced in collecting rhymes--the
matter of getting them complete. Few are able to repeat
the whole of the
"House that Jack built"
although it has been printed many times and they learned
it all in their youth. The difficulty is multiplied tenfold in
China where the rhymes have never been printed, and
where there have grown up various versions from one
original which the nurse had, no doubt, partly forgotten,
but was compelled to complete for the entertainment of the
child.
A second difficulty in making such a collection is that of
getting unobjectionable rhymes. While the Chinese classics
are among the purest classical books of the world, there
is yet a large proportion of the people who sully everything
they take into their hands as well as every thought they take
into their minds. Thus so many of their rhymes have suffered.
Some have an undertone of reviling. Some speak
familiarly of subjects which we are not accustomed to
mention, and others are impure in the extreme.
A third difficulty in making a collection of Chinese nursery
lore is greater than either the first or the second,--I refer to
the difficulty of a metrical rendition of the rhymes. I have
no doubt my readers can easily find flaws in my translations
by Isaac Taylor Headland
PREFACE
No thorough study of Chinese child life can be made until
the wall of Chinese exclusiveness is broken down and the
homes of the East are thrown open to the people of the
West. Glimpses of that life however, are available, sufficient
in number and character to give a fairly good idea of
what it must be. The playground is by no means always
hidden, least of all when it is the street. The Chinese
nurse brings her Chinese rhymes, stories and games into
the foreigner's home for the amusement of its little ones.
Chinese kindergarten methods and appliances have no
superior in their ingenuity and their ability to interest, as
well as instruct. In the matter of travelling shows and
jugglers also, no country is better supplied, and these are
chiefly for the entertainment of the little ones.
To the careful observer of these different phases it
becomes apparent that the Chinese child is well supplied
with methods of exercise and amusement, also that he has
much in common with the children of other lands. A large
collection of toys shows many duplicates of those common
in the West, and from the nursery rhymes of at least two
out of the eighteen provinces it appears that the Chinese
nursery is rich in Mother Goose. As a companion to
the "Chinese Mother Goose," this book seeks to show
that the same sunlight fills the homes of both East and
West. If it also leads their far-away mates to look upon
the Chinese Boy and Girl as real little folk, human like
themselves, and thus think more kindly of them, its mission
will have been accomplished.
CONTENTS
THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES
CHILDREN AND CHILD-LIFE
GAMES PLAYED BY BOYS
GAMES PLAYED BY GIRLS
THE TOYS CHILDREN PLAY WITH
BLOCK GAMES--KINDERGARTEN
CHILDREN'S SHOWS AND ENTERTAINMENTS
JUVENILE JUGGLING
STORIES TOLD TO CHILDREN
THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES
It is a mistake to suppose that any one nation or people
has exclusive right to Mother Goose. She is an omnipresent
old lady. She is Asiatic as well as European or American.
Wherever there are mothers, grandmothers, and
nurses there are Mother Gooses,--or; shall we say, Mother
Geese--for I am at a loss as to how to pluralize this old
dame. She is in India, whence I have rhymes from her,
of which the following is a sample:
Heh, my baby! Ho, my baby!
See the wild, ripe plum,
And if you'd like to eat a few,
I'll buy my baby some.
She is in Japan. She has taught the children there to put
their fingers together as we do for "This is the church,
this is the steeple," when she says:
A bamboo road,
With a floor-mat siding,
Children are quarrelling,
And parents chiding,
the children" being represented by the fingers and the
"parents" by the thumbs. She is in China. I have more
than 600 rhymes from her Chinese collection. Let me tell
you how I got them.
One hot day during my summer vacation, while sitting
on the veranda of a house among the hills, fifteen miles
west of Peking, my friend, Mrs. C. H. Fenn, said to me:
"Have you noticed those rhymes, Mr. Headland?"
"What rhymes?" I inquired.
"The rhymes Mrs. Yin is repeating to Henry."
"No, I have not noticed them. Ask her to repeat that one again."
Mrs. Fenn did so, and the old nurse repeated the following rhyme,
very much in the tone of, "The goblins 'll git you if you don't
look out."
He climbed up the candlestick,
The little mousey brown,
To steal and eat tallow,
And he couldn't get down.
He called for his grandma,
But his grandma was in town,
So he doubled up into a wheel,
And rolled himself down.
I asked the nurse to repeat it again, more slowly, and I
wrote it down together with the translation.
Now, I think it must be admitted that there is more in
this rhyme to commend it to the public than there is in
"Jack and Jill." If when that remarkable young couple
went for the pail of water, Master Jack had carried it
himself, he would have been entitled to some credit for
gallantry, or if in cracking his crown he had fallen so as to
prevent Miss Jill from "tumbling," or even in such a way
as to break her fall and make it easier for her, there would
have been some reason for the popularity of such a record.
As it is, there is no way to account for it except the fact
that it is simple and rhythmic and children like it. This
rhyme, however, in the original, is equal to "Jack and Jill" in
rhythm and rhyme, has as good a story, exhibits a more scientific
tumble, with a less tragic result, and contains as good a moral
as that found in "Jack Sprat."
It is as popular all over North China as "Jack and Jill" is
throughout Great Britain and America. Ask any Chinese child if he
knows the "Little Mouse," and he reels it off to you as readily
as an English-speaking child does "Jack and Jill." Does he like
it? It is a part of his life. Repeat it to him, giving one word
incorrectly, and he will resent it as strenuously as your little
boy or girl would if you said,
Jack and Jill
Went DOWN the hill
Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differently
from the way he learned it and see what the result will be.
Having obtained this rhyme, I asked Mrs. Yin if she
knew any more. She smiled and said she knew "lots of
them." I induced her to tell them to me, promising her
five hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme she
could give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted to
secure all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I had
rhymes which ranged from the two extremes of the keenest
parental affection to those of unrefined filthiness. The
latter class however came not from the nurses but from
the children themselves.
When I had finished with her I had a dozen or more. I
soon learned these so that I could repeat them in the original,
which gave me an entering wedge to the heart of every
man, woman or child I met.
One day, as I rode through a broom-corn field on the
back of a little donkey, my feet almost dragging on the
ground, I was repeating some of these rhymes, when the
driver running at my side said:
"Ha, you know those children's songs, do you?"
"Yes do you know any?"
"Lots of them," he answered.
"Lots of them" is a favorite expression with the Chinese.
"Tell me some."
"Did you ever hear this one?"
"Fire-fly, fire-fly,
Come from the hill,
Your father and mother
Are waiting here still.
They've brought you some sugar,
Some candy, and meat,
For baby to eat."
I at once dismounted and wrote it down, and promised
him five hundred cash apiece for every new one he could
give me. In this way, going to and from the city, in
conversation with old nurses or servants, personal friends,
teachers, parents or children, or foreign children who had
been born in China and had learned rhymes from their
nurses, I continued to gather them during the entire
vacation, and when autumn came I had more than fifty of the
most common and consequently the best rhymes known
in and about Peking.
A few months after I returned to the city a circular was
sent around asking for subscriptions to a volume of Pekinese
Folklore, published by Baron Vitali, Interpreter at the
Italian legation, which, on examination, proved to be exactly
what I wanted. He had collected about two hundred and
fifty rhymes, had made a literal--not metrical--translation
and had issued them in book form without expurgation.
Others learned of my collection, and rhymes began to come
to me from all parts of the empire. Dr. Arthur H. Smith,
the well-known author of "Chinese Characteristics" gave
me a collection of more than three hundred made in Shantung,
among which were rhymes similar to those we had
found in Peking. Still later I received other versions of these
same rhymes from my little friend, Miss Chalfant, collected
in a different part of Shantung from that occupied by Dr.
Smith. I then had no fewer than five versions of
"This little pig went to market,"
each having some local coloring not found in the other,
proving that the fingers and toes furnish children with the
same entertainment in the Orient as in the Occident, and
that the rhyme is widely known throughout China.
These nursery rhymes have never been printed in the
Chinese language, but like our own Mother Goose before
the year 1719, if we may credit the Boston story, they are
carried in the minds and hearts of the children. Here arose
the first difficulty we experienced in collecting rhymes--the
matter of getting them complete. Few are able to repeat
the whole of the
"House that Jack built"
although it has been printed many times and they learned
it all in their youth. The difficulty is multiplied tenfold in
China where the rhymes have never been printed, and
where there have grown up various versions from one
original which the nurse had, no doubt, partly forgotten,
but was compelled to complete for the entertainment of the
child.
A second difficulty in making such a collection is that of
getting unobjectionable rhymes. While the Chinese classics
are among the purest classical books of the world, there
is yet a large proportion of the people who sully everything
they take into their hands as well as every thought they take
into their minds. Thus so many of their rhymes have suffered.
Some have an undertone of reviling. Some speak
familiarly of subjects which we are not accustomed to
mention, and others are impure in the extreme.
A third difficulty in making a collection of Chinese nursery
lore is greater than either the first or the second,--I refer to
the difficulty of a metrical rendition of the rhymes. I have
no doubt my readers can easily find flaws in my translations
- available [ə´veiləbəl]
a.可用的；有效的 (初中英语单词) - character [´kæriktə] n.特性；性质；人物；字 (初中英语单词)
- amusement [ə´mju:zmənt] n.娱乐；文娱设施 (初中英语单词)
- ability [ə´biliti] n.(办事)能力；才干 (初中英语单词)
- instruct [in´strʌkt] vt.教育；指导；通知 (初中英语单词)
- entertainment [,entə´teinmənt] n.招(款)待；联欢会 (初中英语单词)
- observer [əb´zə:və] n.遵守者；观察员 (初中英语单词)
- apparent [ə´pærənt] a.显然的；表面上的 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- sunlight [´sʌnlait] n.日光 (初中英语单词)
- european [juərə´pi:ən] a.欧洲的 n.欧洲人 (初中英语单词)
- collection [kə´lekʃən] n.收集；征收；募捐 (初中英语单词)
- vacation [və´keiʃən, vei´keiʃən] n.假期；休庭期；腾空 (初中英语单词)
- remarkable [ri´mɑ:kəbl] a.值得注意的；显著的 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- promising [´prɔmisiŋ] a.有希望的；有为的 (初中英语单词)
- affection [ə´fekʃən] n.友爱；慈爱 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- circular [´sə:kjulə] a.圆形的 n.通知 (初中英语单词)
- volume [´vɔlju:m, ´vɑljəm] n.卷；书籍；体积；容量 (初中英语单词)
- interpreter [in´tə:pritə] n.译员；解释者；翻译器 (初中英语单词)
- examination [ig,zæmi´neiʃən] n.检查；考试；检验 (初中英语单词)
- well-known [,wel´nəun] a.著名的，众所周知的 (初中英语单词)
- partly [´pɑ:tli] ad.部分地；不完全地 (初中英语单词)
- proportion [prə´pɔ:ʃən] n.比率 vt.使成比例 (初中英语单词)
- thorough [´θʌrə] a.彻底的；详尽的 (高中英语单词)
- playground [´pleigraund] n.操场；运动场 (高中英语单词)
- ingenuity [,indʒi´nju:iti] n.创造性；机灵 (高中英语单词)
- nursery [´nə:səri] n.托儿所；苗床；养鱼场 (高中英语单词)
- exclusive [ik´sklu:siv] a.独有的；集中的 (高中英语单词)
- bamboo [,bæm´bu:] n.竹 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- grandma [´grænmɑ:] n.奶奶；外婆 (高中英语单词)
- commend [kə´mend] vt.把...交托给；称赞 (高中英语单词)
- popularity [,pɔpju´læriti] n.普及；流行；名望 (高中英语单词)
- tragic [´trædʒik] a.悲剧的；悲惨的 (高中英语单词)
- resent [ri´zent] vt.不满于；怨恨；忿恨 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- indifferent [in´difrənt] a.不关心的；中立的 (高中英语单词)
- donkey [´dɔŋki] n.驴子；蠢人；顽固的人 (高中英语单词)
- consequently [´kɔnsikwəntli] ad.因此，所以 (高中英语单词)
- orient [´ɔ:riənt] n.东方 a.东方的 (高中英语单词)
- asiatic [,eiʃi´ætik ,eizi´ætik] a.亚洲(人)的 n.亚洲人 (英语四级单词)
- whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
- veranda [və´rændə] n.游廊；阳台 (英语四级单词)
- apiece [ə´pi:s] ad.每个，每件，每人 (英语四级单词)
- experienced [ik´spiəriənst] a.有经验的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- classical [´klæsikəl] a.经典的；传统的 (英语四级单词)
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章节正文
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