These narratives are fashioned from information I gathered from several
Malaysian and Thai acquaintances of mine, old and new, who were good
enough to spend time with me recalling their experiences with learning
the San Zi Jing as children. From their various reports I constructed
narratives that, I hope, will convey some of the atmosphere of how the
classic was learned by them and people of their generations. The
narratives are highly stylized because that's the way they remember
being taught. In addition, there are some more fully-fleshed out
accounts of some of the stories alluded to in the classic.
The narratives cover only the first and final sections of the San Zi
Jing because almost universally, my sources' families came from
semi-illiterate backgrounds (in terms of the classical Chinese
language), and none of the family members who taught them had in fact
studied any of the books and authors mentioned. There are cross links
to the original translation, for ease changing between the narratives
and the more basic translation.