Is it good to use the TV series “Water Margin” to guide children to read the Four Classical Novels?

   
A friend asked me about her third-grade daugh­ter’s recent love for the new TV series “Water Mar­gin,” and her read­ing abil­i­ty is pret­ty good. Could I use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce her to the Four Great Clas­si­cal Nov­els? This is a very com­mon and inter­est­ing ques­tion, so here’s a quick com­ment:
 
   
Water Mar­gin is tra­di­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized as one of the Four Great Clas­si­cal Nov­els, and it’s cer­tain­ly a good book. But there’s also the say­ing, “Young peo­ple should­n’t read Water Mar­gin, and old peo­ple should­n’t read Romance of the Three King­doms,” which is also quite tra­di­tion­al. Recent­ly, writ­ers like Lung Ying-tai have expressed their dis­ap­proval of chil­dren read­ing Water Mar­gin, while schol­ars like Liu Zai-fu have even called it a pseu­do-cul­tur­al clas­sic. Which of these argu­ments is more rea­son­able? I think both have their points of view. But what real­ly mat­ters is that our chil­dren are our own, so we must have our own per­spec­tives.

 
   
Take me, for exam­ple. I read Water Mar­gin as a child, and I haven’t become a bad per­son, haha. My daugh­ter’s moth­er was also fas­ci­nat­ed by it as a child, and she’s still rel­a­tive­ly well-man­nered. Thank­ful­ly! So when my daugh­ter was lit­tle, we dragged her along to watch the TV series Water Mar­gin (the old ver­sion, of course). She watched a few clips and was hor­ri­fied by the vio­lence! She absolute­ly refused to watch it. We fig­ured it was fine if she did­n’t want to, and we did­n’t force her, con­sid­er­ing she was still young at the time (I think she was­n’t even in school yet). Now my daugh­ter is in sixth grade, and I’ve secret­ly watched two episodes of the new Water Mar­gin. Oh my god, it’s so bloody and vio­lent (I hap­pened to be watch­ing the part about the beat­ing of Zhen Guanxi)! Even I could­n’t stand it, let alone rec­om­mend it to my daugh­ter. Hon­est­ly, she does­n’t have the time to read it; there are so many more inter­est­ing books and things to do.

 
   
I still have the “Water Mar­gin” com­ic strip (old edi­tion, 26 vol­umes; new edi­tion, 32 vol­umes) pub­lished by the Peo­ple’s Fine Arts Pub­lish­ing House. My daugh­ter flips through it when she’s free. I also have Yuan Kuocheng’s sto­ry­telling of “Water Margin”—it’s absolute­ly won­der­ful. We’ve lis­tened to it togeth­er sev­er­al times. The sto­ry­telling ver­sion is essen­tial­ly a folk sto­ry­telling ver­sion, very humor­ous and sharp. It empha­sizes the char­ac­ters, down­plays the upris­ings and fight­ing, and does­n’t include the plot of the sur­ren­der and its after­math. It’s a delight­ful read for both paci­fist adults and chil­dren. I think it could even be cat­e­go­rized as “chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture,” O(∩_∩)O haha~

 
   
In short, the Water Mar­gin retellings by oth­ers, com­ic strips, tele­vi­sion, film, and sto­ry­telling, are all dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the orig­i­nal Water Mar­gin, each imbued with a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and ratio­nale. I think if a child stum­bles upon it, enjoys it, and watch­es it on their own, there’s noth­ing wrong with it. Regard­ing the ques­tion of whether adults should guide chil­dren to watch it, then it’s cru­cial to con­sid­er the adults’ own per­spec­tive and ratio­nale. If adults tru­ly deem it essen­tial, then it’s worth giv­ing it a try and sim­ply read it with them; if not, then let it be.

 
   
How­ev­er, if con­di­tions per­mit, there should always be some ver­sions of books in the col­lec­tion at home so that chil­dren can “come across them on their own” at any time. If there are always no copies, they will nev­er come across them even if they want to :)