Water Margin 3: Wu Song (Level 2) - Graded Readers for Chinese Language Learners (Literary Stories)(800 words)

The series Graded Readers for Chinese Language Learners is composed of 50 books, divided into three subseries, namely folktales, literary stories and historical stories, corresponding to Levels 1-3 respectively. The rich and fun content and easy-to-understand language makes it easy for everyone, whether they are foreigners learning Chinese, children with parents of Chinese origin, ethnic minority students of the Chinese language, or even primary school students in China, to read this series. It enables the readers to gradually improve their Chinese reading skills and enhance their understanding of Chinese culture by reading and enjoying stories. The “Literary Stories” subseries is based on the Four Great Classical Novels in ancient China. From each novel some epic snippets are extracted and adapted into 4-6 books, each with 20-30 thousand characters. Altogether there are 20 books in the subseries, six of which are from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, four from Water Margin, six from Journey to the West and four from Dream of the Red Chamber. Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels, tells the story of 108 heroes at the end of Northern Song Dynasty, Song Jiang as their head, who gathered together and rose in rebellion and then were recruited by the government to fight battles. There are four books in this series based on this novel, namely Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels, The Corrupt Official’s Birthday Gift, Wu Song, and Song Jiang. Wu Song tells the story of Wu Song being driven to join the Liangshan rebels. Wu Song was born with extraordinary strength. He killed a tiger with bear hands and became a military officer in Yanggu County. However, his brother was murdered and the local government wouldn’t do him justice. To avenge his brother, Wu Song killed the murderers Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing and therefore was tattooed on the face and banished to Mengzhou. Later in Mengzhou, Wu Song, being drunk, beat Jiang Menshen out of justice. Then he was framed by Inspector Zhang, but he escaped and killed his enemy. He went to Erlong Mountain and later joined the Liangshan rebels.