Chinese Classic Tales Of Wisdom For Beginners E-Book

Christian Stahl

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 133

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Learning Chinese with classic old Chinese tales is so easy and enjoyable that even beginners without prior knowledge can use this book in a variety of ways based on your needs. When it comes to learning Chinese, traditional textbooks and taking classes are not an option. Chinese vowels can be troublesome, that is mostly because memory forgets rather quickly, which is especially true for Chinese where you don't understand the phonetics and any of the characters of this language.

By reading Chinese classic tales and short stories with English paragraph by paragraph translation and Chinese Pinyin reading aid, you will get a much more practical and fun to do approach. This book includes Chinese characters, Chinese reading aid, and English parallel text in blocks.

1 The quail and the bird rock

2 The ointment

3 Beauty is inimitable

4 The frog

5 Too many ways.

6 The king and his bow

7 Why the wine got sour

8 A painter for the king

9 Water snakes on land

10 The proud coachman.

11 The population doesn't grow..

12 In the shadow of the great

13 The rumor

14 The clever old woman.

15 The cicade the leafhopper and the oriole

16 The soldier's uniform

17 A mirror image

18 The king's generosity

19 Why he was the prettier one

20 The suspicion

Leseprobe

Strangers from a Strange World

A Short Story Collection Of Mysteries

Christian Stahl

© Copyright 2021 by Christian Stahl - All rights reserved

License Notice

In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, download, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format without the consent of the author or publisher. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.

All rights reserved

The purpose of this book is for entertainment purposes solely, and is universal as so. Any name and content in this book is fiction and not related to any real events or persons. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher or author for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly.

Strangers from a Strange World

The Evil Double Life

The Haunting

The Unreachable Sea Wife

Cafe Lisbon

The Girl from the Salvation Army

The London Marathon

Rescue from Devil’s Island

The Breach

The Disfigured Painting

Christian Stahl

Details of all the author's available books and upcoming titles can be found at:

www.shortstoriesforbeginners.com

Strangers from a Strange World

Even now, Ben Iglesias doesn’t know what happened that day. The memory came to him in fragments; a cacophony of sound and vision that didn’t quite fit together into a coherent picture. It was like sand between his fingers, trickling away every time he tried to reach for it.

He remembered the flight. It should have been a routine trip, from Mars to Earth, a journey that he had planned extensively, a journey he had already taken four times before. For his crew, it had been their first time piloting a ship, but they’d had simulation experience and were well-prepared. Nothing should have gone wrong.

The moment they had entered Earth’s orbit, the system went down. A warning light flickered on at the control panel, and then the alarms had started, blasting through the spacecraft with growing intensity. The atmosphere turned dense, and at some point amid the chaos, Ben had lost consciousness.

When he woke up, everything was silent. The alarms had ceased, and only the thin red strobe of the emergency sign punctuated the air above him.

The bodies of his four crewmates were sprawled around him, unmoving. He knew they were dead. Their eyes were still open, staring blankly at the ceiling of the craft, and their chests were still.

The emergency lights were on, but everything else was dead. There was no static, no alarm, no warnings beeping on the console. Just silence.

He couldn’t tell how long had passed since the spacecraft had landed. It must have crashed, judging by the state of chaos around him, debris and equipment toppled over. Somewhere in the rear of the craft, he could hear electricity sparking, and the air was tinged with the smell of burning. He had to get out, before the whole thing went up in flames.

Climbing to his feet, he staggered over to the control panel and took in the readings that were displayed on the cracked monitor. None of them made sense. The weather, the coordinates, even the time and date… none of it could be correct. The readings must have gone haywire when the system malfunctioned. He pressed the button on the comms system, trying to reach base, but it was dead. Everything was dead.

When he glanced out of the spacecraft’s narrow windows, he struggled to understand what he was seeing. He should have been somewhere on the shore, near La Havana Cuba. They’d come down just over the Caribbean Sea. But instead, the landscape stretched on in shades of yellow and brown.

Ignoring the pain in his head, Ben eventually exited the spacecraft, leaving behind the bodies of his crew, and stepped out onto the white sand. The desert seemed to roll on forever, towards a burning sun that made mirages on the horizon. The atmosphere was stifling, and according to his tech, there was only 60% oxygen present. He could feel his chest tightening up, but forced himself to take slow, calm breaths. Panicking would only make it worse.

Where was he?

All he could see, for miles around, was that glinting golden sea of sand. No buildings or man-made structures, just dunes and peaks and a few rocks in the distance.

He was in the middle of nowhere. The supplies he had on the spaceship were likely trapped beneath the debris, and he didn’t know how long he had before the craft went up in flames. He had to get away from it, but where would he go?

There was nowhere to go but forward, towards the burning sun.

The air here was sweltering, and sweat beaded along his brow as he slipped over the sand in his space suit. He’d have to take it off sooner or later, but for now, he’d rather keep it on, if only for the extra layer of protection it afforded. 

He kept walking, the sands shifting constantly underfoot as the sun bore down on him, until his body gave in to exhaustion. The crash had already weakened him, and when he glanced back, he realised he’d barely made it more than a few metres away from the ship itself. 

Sinking to his knees in the sand, Ben closed his eyes. How had this happened? What had caused the ship’s system to fail, bringing them down to Earth hundreds of miles off course? It didn’t make sense to him. His crew was dead, and he was all alone. He doubted he would last much longer in this heat anyway, not without food or water. A sense of complete hopelessness descended on him, and he began to shake. Why had this happened to him? What had he done to deserve such a horrible twist of fate?

Wind buffeted the side of his face, blowing sand against his eyelids. He couldn’t stay here. He had to keep moving. Even if it hurt, he couldn’t just give up.

When his eyes flickered back open, he realised he was not alone.

Cresting the peak of a nearby sand dune was a figure.

Ben reached up vigorously to rub his eyes, thinking he was hallucinating, but then more of them appeared, small dark shadows blotting the horizon.

People. There were people.

Ben tried to climb to his feet, but his knees buckled again, and he landed hard in the sand.

The first figure began shuffling down the dune towards him, and he stayed where he was. From what he could see, they did not carry weapons, and seemed more curious than aggressive. They were like no people he had ever seen before, but he didn’t know what else they could be. They had the same build and features of humans, but they were also much shorter.

As the group of people reached him, they clustered around him in a semi-circle staring down at him. But even on his knees, Ben was almost as tall as they were standing up.

There were mostly women present, and a couple of men, but their skin was dark and painted with chalk, different to his pale skin and light hair. Their eyes, too, were unusual. Like dark stones, set deep into their faces. One woman in particular caught his eye; her eyes were black and shining, almost like a cat’s. She cocked her head slightly when she realised he was looking at her.

Who were these people? Were they Australian Aborigines? There was some resemblance, but they were smaller and thinner, almost skeletal in appearance, and their skin was rough like the sand.

The man in front of him pulled a water skin from the string around his waist and offered it to Ben. When Ben hesitated, he gestured for him to drink, tipping the skin towards him.

Ben finally nodded, taking the water from him with trembling, sand-burned hands. He took a sip, feeling the cold liquid wash down his throat, and then another, careful not to take too much. 

“Thank you,” he rasped, handing the water back to the man.

The stranger then motioned for Ben to follow. Two of the women came forward to help Ben to his feet, one of them being the woman with the cat-like eyes, who was at least four heads shorter than him. Despite their small bodies, they had surprising strength, and managed to get him to his feet with minimal effort.

The man gestured again for Ben to follow, so he did.

It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. Only forward.

The mysterious people led him through the desert, over the dunes and peaks, until they came to the valley of stones that Ben had seen in the distance. When he glanced back, his spacecraft was nothing but a smudge on the horizon.

The rocks here were white, sun-bleached, and covered with small holes. The woman with dark eyes tapped the stone with her finger, white chalk smearing onto her skin, and gestured for him to look inside.

He complied, stepping up to a hole that was big enough for him to squeeze through. 

Inside was a cave system with a high-arching ceiling, stalactites hanging down like teeth. From deeper inside, he could hear water striking stone. The rocks must soak up moisture and deposit it deep in the system. 

He looked in amazement at the woman next to him, and her lips curved into a faint smile. Ben found himself smiling back.

Someone shouted behind him, a word he did not recognise, in a language he did not know, and he turned.

The man from before was standing before him, holding out a strange looking fruit. He mimicked eating it, before holding it out to Ben. He took it with a grateful nod, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh. The fruit was like nothing he had tasted before, filling his mouth with a sweet, tangy aroma. With food and water in his stomach, he could feel his strength returning. He was saved, after all. He owed his life to these people. But now more than ever, he realised he was stuck here. These people lived in the desert, lived off the land. They had no infrastructure, no supplies. Just the remnants of a civilisation. Surely that meant there was nothing here.

Nowhere to go, no method of travel but to walk across the sands.

He was still alone. He could not speak with these people, did not know their language, their customs. He was a stranger here. 

Once he had finished the fruit, licking the juices from his fingers, he tried to thank the people around him. He got to his knees and pressed his head to the dusty rocks, trying to communicate his gratitude for saving him.

A hand gently touched his shoulder, and when he looked up, he was staring into those beautiful black eyes again. The woman shook her head gently, signalling for him to stand, so he did.

“Thank you,” he said again, unsure if they could understand him. “My name is Ben.” He pointed to himself, repeating his name.

“Ben,” the people around him repeated.

The man pointed to himself next, and said in a slow voice: “Ruma.”

“Ruma,” Ben repeated, nodding, then turned to the woman expectantly. She seemed surprised to be asked, but also gestured to herself.

“Lera.”

“Lera,” he said softly. “Lera.”

The woman seemed to grow sheepish, taking a step back, and Ben smiled in amusement. Perhaps they weren’t so strange after all. 

That night, Ben lay under the stars, cushioned by the rocks in the valley. He could not sleep. His thoughts would not settle, going round and round in his head like a sputtering engine. 

What now?

He had been saved by these people, given food and water and shelter, but what came next? His ship was broken, his crew was dead. Nobody knew where he was; nobody would come looking for him. He could hardly even tell how long had passed since he was last at the space station. The journey between Mars and Earth already seemed so long ago. It felt as though time had already changed, propelling him into a future he wasn’t expecting. The world here was not the world he remembered, but different. Like he had been away for many more years than he knew.

Perhaps he had. Time could be a fickle thing in space. And the crash, landing amid this unknown land, the coordinates and temperature, everything that had been displayed on the ship’s control panel – everything he thought was incorrect – might not be so far-fetched after all. If their entry into the Earth’s orbit had torn through time itself, things would begin to make a lot more sense.

But Ben couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t communicate with these people, couldn’t ask them the year or the day, if they even had the same calendar he was familiar with.

There was no point in pondering things he could not know. It would only drive him mad.

Instead, he should focus on the rational dangers ahead of him. Like the fact that he was trapped here, in the golden sands of some unknown land, without any means of getting back home. 

The hopelessness of his situation came crashing back down to him, leaving him gasping for air.

He got up, shaking the dust from his clothes, and went to the edge of the stony ridge, looking out across the darkness. The stars shone brighter here than he had ever seen, creating a silver mist along the horizon. 

A figure stepped up beside him, silent as a cat.

“Lera,” he whispered.

She said something in her tongue, and he looked at her. She was pointing up to the sky. She said it again, and he realised she was telling him the word for the stars. He repeated it, looking up at where he’d come from. He’d come from the stars. A place as mysterious and unknown as this. But a place he had once called home. 

“Home,” he said out loud, and Lera repeated it in her gentle voice. 

“This is your home?” Ben continued, gesturing around him.

Lera squinted, trying to gauge the meaning of his words, before nodding.

She pointed to the rocks, and then the sand, saying each word slowly so that he could repeat it after her.

The night passed like this, the two of them sitting on the rocks while Lera tried to teach him her language. 

After a few days, Ben was starting to get the basics. With nowhere else to go, he’d decided to stay. These people had no qualms about taking him in, and they provided him food and water from their stores, and in return, he used his stronger body to help them shift rocks and collect water from inside the caves.

A week passed, and then another.

Ben began to change. He grew accustomed to a life among the rocks and the sand. His skin began to turn golden, taking on the same rough, sandy texture as the sand dwellers. He grew more confident in their language, achieving basic communication, thanks to Lera’s instruction. 

There were still moments where, in the silence and the solitude, he’d feel a sense of displacement, like he didn’t really belong here. And the memories of the crash, the mystery of what had happened, still haunted him. He would have nightmares of what happened, waking up in the dead of night in a panic, mourning his dead crew, his vulnerability.

But then Lera would be there, soothing him with her gentle voice, stroking her delicate fingers through his hair. 

He grew closer to her over those weeks, almost never straying from her side. They collected water together, travelled across the sands together, to the only trees that bore fruit for miles around. She was the community’s healer too, and she taught him how to make medicines from the plants that grew there, crushing them into pastes that healed the sores and scrapes they sustained from living in such a harsh environment.