Most people often have the illusion that the protagonists in fables are mostly animals, but this is not the case. As far as China is concerned, of course, there are animals as the protagonists, but there are also many things related to the world; Sometimes diachronic characters are used to add interest to the story and make the whole narrative look more real. Fables enrich the language of our country. The concise form of fables has become an inseparable part of Chinese.
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China's folk fables are extremely rich and generally short. In addition to the Han nationality, there are fables of ethnic minorities. Most of the fables created by people of all ethnic groups take animals as the protagonists, and use the activities and relationships of animals to throw in a lesson or metaphor to achieve the purpose of fable. It reflects the healthy and simple thoughts of the working people and shines with the infinite wisdom and noble morality of the people.
China's ancient fables have a long history and were formed in the pre-Qin period. It has gone through five stages: the fable of reasoning in pre-Qin, the fable of exhortation in Han Dynasty, the satirical fable in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the satirical fable in Tang and Song Dynasties and the humorous fable in Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Many idioms are from ancient fables, such as Smith, carving a boat for a sword and stealing a clock. Now there is a book, Fables of China, which contains China's fables.
Modern Chinese Dictionary explains "fable" in this way: literary works that illustrate a certain truth or lesson with false stories or anthropomorphic natural objects are often ironic or admonitory.
In fact, there are many idiom stories in our Chinese textbooks, such as: contradiction, stealing clocks, pulling out seedlings to help others, making up for death and so on. These favorite idiom stories are short and pithy, which contain profound truth and are fables.
The hero of a fable can be a person, an animal or a plant. Fables often use metonymy to reveal educational themes or profound truths in highly concise stories.
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