“Meng Mu San Qian” is a well-known old Chinese parable. As coming from China, I understand this story very well, and there is an invisible value behind the story that I would like to share with you today. Furthermore, by reading the second story of the “American Born Chinese” cartoon book, I believe that the author must have learned something from this story.
So first, let’s look at this old Chinese parable and see why it could make this author write about it. Long time ago, Mencius (Meng) was keen on playing in his childhood and was good at imitativeness, his mother (Meng Mu) successively moved their house three times (San Qian) for preventing him from learning any bad behaviors through their neibours. For the third time of their move, Mother chose to live near the school. As a result, Mencius learned etiquette and knowledge along with the other school students, and mother felt very happy and no longer moved.
According to our assigned reading, we can notice that the author thought of “Meng Mu San QIan” story when he and his family making a move from one place to another. Meng Mu decided to move because she wanted his son to stay with good neighbourhood, and learn from them based on his outstanding mimic ability. The author cried and wrote may be due to,
1) The author was then a little fond of playing boy. After recalling this old story, he might realized that what he did before depressed his mother, and his mother chose to move because she wanted her son to be influenced by some good neibours. As soon as he noticed this, he felt really sorry to his mother, and decided to study very hard along with the hard working circumstances of his living community.
2)The author might also want to point out this social problem that some parents may concern. Since bad living environment would probably affect children development, some particular parents should keep alert and take an action sometimes.
The invisible value behind the story, as I mentioned before, is that it emphasized the importance of the living environment to children development. When children live in a good/ positive community, they will naturally behave positively along with those good neighbours. Vice – versa, when children live in a bad/negative community, they will behave negatively along with those bad neighbours. Although the story is old, its spirit and idea have been still spreading by people nowadays.
Before, “Zhang Jia Jie Daily Newspaper” reported that, “In China, according to our ancient story “Meng Mu San Qian”, most elementary school, middle school, and high school have been made an agreement on developing education, cultivating talented-students, and beautifying campus are important to our education development, which also needs to proceed right away.” China government spent a huge amount of money to this project because the government believe that a good learning environment would definitely make an effort to students.
Not only the China government, but also some Chinese parents act to build the best living and learning environment for their children. Take me for example. When I went to high school in China, my parents signed a three-year lease of an old apartment near to my school, and set there as our home for those three years. Since high-school students in China are normally grouped as the poorest students in China, they can never finish reading books or doing homework. Most Chinese parents, including mine, would like to move for their kids. In this case, they could let their children sleep maybe ten more minutes. And also, they decided to live with them for taking good care of. They always show their best responsibility to their kids. In another word, they are also showing the very responsibility to our society, to the future.
I guess you might be interested in watching this "Meng Mu San Qian" Cartoon, in Chinese. Try it, it will be really fun!
