Hulin and the Mad Goose: Four Folk Tales in Simplified Chinese and Pinyin, 600 Word Vocabulary

by Jeff Pepper, Xiao Hui Wang (Translator)

Folk tales are immensely popular in China. Passed down orally over the centuries from grandparents and parents to children, they serve as an unwritten handbook for living. Nearly all Chinese folk tales are about simple people who find themselves in difficult situations. These people are often helped (and occasionally hindered) by talking animals, as well as by powerful gods, wizards and other supernatural beings who actively interfere in events here on earth (天下, tiānxià, “under heaven”). And within every Chinese folk tale is a moral or message from one of the three major schools of spiritual thought – Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.Of the thousands of Chinese folk tales, we’ve selected four of them for your enjoyment in this book. All four are all based on stories told by Norman Hinsdale Pitman in A Chinese Wonder Book, originally published in 1918. The story is told using fewer than 600 different Chinese words, most of which are in the standard HSK4 vocabulary, making it accessible to beginning and intermediate students of Chinese. A glossary of all words is in the back of the book, along with an English translation. And a free audiobook version is available on YouTube, on the Imagin8 Press channel. These stories are written by the best-selling writing team of Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang, authors of the Journey to the West series of graded readers, and translations of Chinese classics including the Dao De Jing, the Art of War, and the San Zi Jing. Information on their books can be found at www.imagin8press.com.

131 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2020

About the author

I'm a writer and publisher living in Verona Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. My company, Imagin8 Press, has published over 100 fiction and nonfiction books for people learning to read Chinese. Our best sellers are an innovative English translation of the Dao De Jing and a 31-volume retelling, in easy Chinese, of the classic novel Journey to the West.

I’m also a lifelong science fiction fan, and started writing sci-fi seriously in 2024. I am delighted that my short story, “Spaceship of Fools,” was accepted by Bewildering Stories. My first full-length sci-fi novel, “Ascent to the Sun,” was published in April 2025.

Before embarking on my current career, I was in the software business. I founded and led three successful companies: ServiceWare, which began in my basement and went public on the NASDAQ; Touchtown, which was acquire by Uniguest; and Tunescribers. I have a degree in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University, where I taught an undergraduate course in computer programming.

When not sitting in front of a glowing screen, you can probably find me playing competitive pickleball.